


Ahnu Hope

by Antiph



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Amnesia, Anxiety, Death, Denial, Depression, Existential Crisis, NPC's - Freeform, Nonbinary Character, Original Character(s), PTSD, constantly, just an NPC menagerie up in here, just generally avoiding your problems in a maladaptive method of coping, memory shenanigans, will add tags as story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 09:28:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 195,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26969764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antiph/pseuds/Antiph
Summary: A reimagining of the events of "Zelda: Breath of the Wild" wherein a character with an actual backstory and numerous complex ties to the ancient history of Hyrule fills the place of out non-titular hero, forced to comply with a contemporary fate that far outweighs the vitality of their mortal soul forever stuck in the cycle of reincarnation.  Will align with canon on all major plot beats, but with uncountable divergences and developments of my own creation, as well as some popular Zelda series theories.Basically, I have a lot of free time on my hands due to the plague, and since I have next to nothing to do and a surplus of Zelda related content is on the way, I figured I would try to hone my writing and drawing skills by finally putting the AU-ish thing I've had brewing up in my mind for the last two and a half years.  From the go, I'm guessing this will be around two million words long, and I'm not joking.  Comments and corrections to grammar are welcome.  Please enjoy.Tumblr, solely dedicated to posting art and other junk related to this story:https://ahnu-hope.tumblr.com/
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1--  Wake Up

Warmth.

For a sudden moment, that was all they were aware of. They couldn’t see, they couldn’t move—but they felt an all too familiar onrush of urgency in the ripple of their self. Their form that didn’t feel quite right-that felt like it extended beyond the confines of a body that was under the slightest amount of pressure, but also floating all the same. Still and insensate, they couldn’t tell that they weren’t breathing. 

Just waiting. Waiting for that warmth to do _something_.

Then suddenly, that undulation that began somewhere in their center picked up. They felt the tickle of something—many something’s—sweep through and past, making to break for the exterior beyond and away from the vessel that was their inert and ill-delineated shape. A shape that suddenly seemed too small; almost claustrophobic. Their form grew cooler, parts of it slowly seeping at that warmth—that which they were starting to feel resonating from somewhere within themself, along with a dull throb that was almost audible. As the chill grew more prominent, so too did the distinction of the heat that spread through what became palpable extremities. What they were suddenly became defined—their body suddenly endowed coherence. It was with a harrowing sort of absence that they perceived a murmur they had no particular sentiment towards. 

Insensible and still, it was with only half a mind that they began to make out the noises of some sort of soft burbling, languid thrumming, and barely discernible mumbles, all of which were steadily growing louder. Along with the noise, the darkness that was all they’d known up to this point was abruptly pricked by something that was anything _but_ —And it too grew with the noise. A sort of brightness, that was sweeping the darkness out of their mind. 

An unregistered strain grew in the background of the pulse that rang in their ears and the urgent whispers that started to scratch at their skull. The coolness that licked at their warmth was surging around them in a torrent that refused to dissipate, and the opalescence that engrossed their thoughts—light practically beating at their eyelids, begging to be let in—before suddenly, they heard it. 

“ _Open your eyes_.”

And just like that, the tension finally broke. 

In an instant, their body _burned_. The cool pool that contained them became frigid and the hot blood that finally began to circulate after so long seared the muscle under their skin. They spasmed in shock, everything suddenly ambulatory but refusing to cooperate—sloshing what was evidently some liquid solution they were fully immersed in; a liquid that began to drain. The cold pool gave way to colder air, stunning them to near stillness, eyes still tightly clenched. 

It was only when it became evident that the illumination that consumed their mind would not subside, did they finally heed the permission they’d been given. 

Darkness. That was the first thing they saw. 

Eyes unblinking (for the deep-seated fear that if they closed them now they would not be able to open them again burrowed itself viciously into their frantically processing mind), they took note of the tightness in their chest and at the back of their throat. The previously gentle throb throughout their form became a quickly present pounding in their skull, and all too sudden they realized that they had yet to breathe—that they _needed_ to. 

A sharp, painful inhale was all it took to alleviate the pressure in their chest and head, and almost immediately they began to gain vision in increments. They’d evidently traded that comforting but insistent yellow light for something blue and _deeply_ unsettling, though they couldn’t exactly place why. Details began to fill in, as the complex design of some strange, inorganic flower with a large set disc and a series of those unnerving blue lights embedded in it opened up above them. Beyond it, a series of thick tubes that entangled with each other before meeting the ceiling thrummed with that eerie blue brightness as well, in patterns both captivating and disconcerting. 

Shaking off their stupor, they realized that all in the chamber was silent, save for the subtle hum they knew to be emanating from the room around them, and that ever urgent voice that had sunk back into an imperceptible whisper. 

Then, a far louder and prominent clicking started up to their left, away from the raised platform they’d evidently been laying on. Turning their head, a movement far more strenuous than it ought to have been, they saw another, smaller pedestal. On it something small popped up. Something that they knew they wanted from the moment they laid their eyes on it. 

Slowly pushing their back off of the surface they wanted nothing more than to get away from, they sat up and slid their legs over the high ridges that bordered the flat of the platform they were previously occupying. Pushing off of it fully, their bare feet met the ground, before they began to stumble their way forward. Catching themself before they’d fallen over, they took a moment to steady themself on their feet. 

As soon as they stood straight they proceeded to reach for their back on impulse, a bout of dread welling up and dropping in their stomach when they felt nothing but the bare skin over their shoulder. Almost immediately the anxiety was washed away by confusion, but when they refocused on the strange glowing slate before them, they dismissed those undefined concerns as they zoned in on the device. 

They studied it for a moment before picking it up and turning it around in their hands. As soon as they’d started fiddling with it though, the center portion of the pedestal with the recess the slate in their hands once occupied rotated, and sunk back into the rest of the dais. As it settled, the parallel slabs of what looked to be stone—or at least a grainy material that was darker than the make of everything else in the room—began to rise one after another, branching out from the center. The door that they’d paid little attention to when they woke up was now open. The mumbles that muddled their mind prattled off more in their head, hardly to their notice.

They’d entered another, larger room. In it they’d found decayed barrels and crates they couldn’t hope to open, but most excitedly they spotted an old pair of chests in the center of the seemingly abandoned supplies. Opening them eagerly, they procured a set of ragged, bug eaten clothes—an old shirt and a well-worn pair of trousers by the looks of it—both of which smelled of mildew and were noticeably too small for them. Regardless, they slipped the clothes on with little thought, moving the belt the chest supplied over the short pants, which were a bit tight over their hips and thick under-shorts. The shirt clung tightly around their armpits, and they had half a mind to rip off the sleeves when the other half suddenly became occupied by the insistent noise that was that same voice from just before. 

They distinctly made out the word “pedestal” just as they’d spotted the very subject that it—she?—the voice was regarding. Walking up to it, it illuminated in response to their proximity, displaying a runic circle of angular branching orange lights enclosed around another circle of the same blue that seemed to drown the ruins they currently inhabited. 

For a brief moment, they saw something—no, not physically—they imagined something. _Someone_ —

 _A gloved, pale hand holding the slate up to the pedestal_ —

They blinked at the noise the pedestal made, the entirety of it's display phasing to blue as a quick flicker of the same light managed to leap off of the surface before fading into the air. They’d moved the slate up to the pedestal without much thought, in mimicry of what they thought they’d seen.

Before they could question the voice, the vision, the action—any of it—the segments of stone that made up what they presumed to be yet another door they’d (also) paid little attention to clicked some, before the center of it lit up in some ornate pattern. They froze when they saw it. The symbol in blue was striking for some reason they couldn’t quite place—something they couldn’t quite remember—but it was certainly something they knew. Something—

Familiar. They stared at the symbol, and until the opening door pulled it away and it dimmed, it stared right back. Looking down at the slate in their hands, they realized that it too, bore the same symbol. 

So caught up in their reverie, it took them a moment to notice that the door was even open, much less that it had opened to reveal a hallway that led to something bright. That mumbling in the back of their mind picked up again, this time only the word “light” sticking out. 

When their eyes adjusted, they stepped forward into the hall, suddenly understanding just what they were looking at. It was the _outside_. 

Sprinting through a puddle and bounding over the ledge In front of them, they broke through the threshold that was the exit of the tomb they’d awoken in, into the open air. 

* * *

They giggled as they pounced on yet another Hightail Lizard in the grass, watching it wriggle around in their hands once they’d picked it up, before it disappeared in a flash of blue. Immediately after it was gone, they honed in on a Bladed Rhino Beetle resting on the side of a tree, sneaking up on it in a slow, quiet crouch. After they’d plucked the confused thing off of the tree and watched as it disappeared into thin air, they caught sight of a red butterfly they’d yet to catch resting on a flower a few paces away from the base of the tree, quickly scooting over and cupping it in their hands. Through the cracks of their fingers, they saw the telltale flash of blue, after which they opened their hands to find them empty. Hurriedly tugging the slate off of their belt where they’d loosely hooked it with a cloth band, they opened up the catalog and searched for the newest addition to their little menagerie of items and critters, to see what the slate had to say about the butterfly. 

{OBJECT RECOGNIZED. DATA AVAILABLE. PROCESSING...}

They rolled their eyes. It rattled off this message every time they picked up something brand new that the slate could hold. 

{SUMMERWING BUTTERFLY}

They briefly read the short description the slate provided about the warmly colored lepidoptera, before the flicker of a Grasshopper jumping through a distant patch of tall grass caught their eye, and they holstered the slate on their belt once again before pursuing it. 

The moment after they’d come out of the crypt, they were far more interested in gathering sticks than taking in their surroundings. Every time they’d pick one up though, it’d disappear out of their hands in a flash of blue, until they’d picked up enough that no more would disappear. They’d thought it strange, but continued to look around, a ring of mushrooms they felt like they knew to be edible making itself very prominent and appealing. But when they plucked each of those, they all disappeared within five seconds of being grabbed exactly. Same with acorns, and beetles, and a lizard they’d found in a bush. 

It took them only a few minutes to check the slate, connecting the flash of blue light to its own blue display, where after fumbling around with it, they’d managed to bring up some sort of list of icons, with several distinct words beneath each. Their eyes immediately locked in on the one labeled “Weapons” and so that was the one they tapped on the screen. 

Much to their surprise, there on the screen were all eight sticks they’d collected! Tapping one of them brought up—a summary? For a branch?

Tapping it again brought up some sort of inquiry menu. 

{EQUIP}

{DROP}

{CANCEL}

Curious, they clicked “equip.” Almost instantly, they’d felt something suddenly rub up on their back. Looking at their chest, a simple rope seemed to have appeared looped diagonally across their torso, over one shoulder and over the opposite side of their waist. Instantly, they felt that same urge they did when they’d first woken up and reached behind their back to find nothing, only this time their hand pulled away with a stick!

Immediately, they looked back to the slate, still held in their left hand. Surely enough, the stick that they’d chosen had read as “Equipped.” Putting the stick back in the tangle of rope on their back without so much as fumbling (almost as if it were second nature to them), they looked through a few of the other options, all others but “Materials” being empty. There, they’d found the meager miscellaneous flora, fauna, and fungi they’d managed to accrue, and tapped twice on a mushroom, selecting the “Hold” option. It appeared approximately where their hand was about five seconds later, but since said hand was fiddling with the slate, it merely tapped their knuckles before falling to the ground. Picking it up and tossing it into their mouth, they tried again, but held out their dominant hand, open and facing up. The mushroom materialized almost perfectly in their palm. That was the first thing that made them smile. 

Now they were scooping up anything and everything that the slate would store for them, though it didn’t seem to take to objects a bit too general, like pebbles or grass. They wondered if they could mess with it in a way to make it so that it would, but for the time being they were satisfied with just mushrooms and bugs. So caught up in their meager foraging and laughter, they paid little mind to the weak mutters in their head. Had they paid attention, they might have made out something akin to directions, but alas, they did not. 

However, what they _finally_ did pay attention to was their surroundings. As they made their way down the hill, grabbing anything in sight that interested them, they instead caught sight of... a person. Someone sitting by a fire, under a rock alcove. 

Judging by how his head faced them, he’d caught sight of them too. 

They instinctively wanted to avoid him. They’d almost turned around and walked away before they noticed that his camp under an outcropping of rock was next to an apple tree, and so they promptly shoved their discomfort aside in order to raid the tree of its fruit. All the while, they felt his eyes on them, but he regarded their actions rather neutrality and without judgement, like one might a passing deer, and respectfully stayed quiet.

After hopping down from the tree, they turned to him fully, less intimidated by his presence but wary all the same. The abrupt eye contact was awkward and uncomfortable for them, but they didn’t look away, watching him as if he were a predator that would strike the moment they turned their back on him. After a few seconds of charged staring, the man—who looked rather old, now that they got a good look at him—smirked at them softly, before lowering his gaze to a fire he’d begun to prod with a neat looking staff of wood that bore a lantern on the end of its bowed top. They let out a breath they hadn’t known they were holding in, shoulders slumping as their formerly tense body relaxed at his submission. Whoever he was, they doubted he was a threat, or even particularly hostile. 

They considered walking on, before they spotted something next to the fire. It looked like an apple, darkened due to its proximity to the blazing heat, but not exactly burnt. They smelled the air near it, catching a whiff of the cooked fruit in the salient smell of smoke. They walked over and scooped up the apple with little flourish, mostly wanting to get a better smell of it, but partially wanting to scarf it down before the slate had the chance to store it away, if it even would have, that was. 

“I BEG YOUR PARDON!” The old man suddenly piped up. It was a statement more stern than it was loud, but it made them nearly jump out of their skin regardless. It took them a moment to process the words—the spoken language being familiar enough—but the meaning was either too vague or lost on them (or both), and so they did little more than fluster in response to his callout. They were sure they would have run off if their legs would have cooperated, but they were thoroughly frozen in place. They turned to look at him with eyes blown wide in alarm, but otherwise a face that bore nothing other than confusion. “I do believe that is my baked apple! You can’t just go about taking whatever you please!” He continued.

Ah. So that was it. Of course this was his. It was by the fire he was tending to alone after all. They moved to put it back down next to the fire when they heard him chuckle. Even more confused at his sudden shift in mood, seeing how near upset he was, they looked back to the old man again, furrowing their brows and tilting their head to the side. Upon noticing their conflicted countenance, the old man quickly resumed—

“Forgive me—I could not resist pulling your leg.” So his actions were in jest? They couldn’t say they particularly appreciated that. “Please help yourself. An apple and an open flame make for a succulent treat.”—But that, they could. 

They swiftly devoured the “baked apple“ as he called it, much to the old man’s amusement. When it didn’t disappear from their grasp, they figured that the Slate also didn’t like to take things that were considered “incomplete” like an apple with a bite taken out of it, or maybe it didn’t bother trying to wrench something they grasped oh-so tightly and securely out of their hands. Regardless, they finished the baked apple with no distractions from the Slate, and especially none from the one who gifted them the snack. They looked back to him as he returned to prodding the fire. 

“I have to say, it is rather strange to see another soul in these parts, especially a young Hylian like yourself...” He absently remarked, shifting a log that made the loose structure that was the bundle of wood stacked in a manner to propagate the flames collapse. 

A Hylian? Is that what they were? What he was? They thought about it for a second, turning the word over in their mind, before concluding that yes, that sounded right. They sat down next to the fire, not because they were particularly cold in the wake of the bright morning sun, but because it just seemed appropriate. They studied the man for a moment, what little of his skin they could see under his hooded face wasn’t particularly pale, but not dark either, and the hair of his beard was white and clean looking. 

They looked at their own hands in kind, not really noticing themself before they had another person to compare to. Their skin was brown, and particularly marred looking, at least on the parts of their arms and legs that they could see. Tugging a lock of hair away from their face and into the sun to examine, they could see well enough that it was black, or at least a dark ebony, in complete contrast to the man before them. 

Looking at him a tad closer, they saw that he too was dressed in a shabby ensemble of worn down clothes, though in many more layers. It made them desire that they had just a few more layers themself, again not due to the cold—albeit the cool air wasn’t as welcome as they initially thought as time dragged on—but because it looked comfortable. They felt bare and vulnerable in comparison to the older man, and they especially coveted his gloves. They looked neat, what with how they were fingerless, but also extended beyond the wrist and up the forearm. They personally didn’t like having to touch things with their bare hands all the time, or at least their bare palms. They looked back up to his face, and decided that they liked the hood too. Something dark that obscured their face and blocked out the sun, even if it might have left their vision obscured and hearing a bit more muffled. Just under his hood, they looked at his unfocused eyes, still directed at the fire. They were soft and grey, partially reflecting the orange of the flames. They weren’t sure if they liked him—his presence wasn’t exactly unfamiliar, and they couldn’t decide if that was unnerving or a comfort-but he was the only other person they’d found, and he seemed kind enough. He really did look quite homely. 

“Who-oo are, yuh-you?” They asked in the language he spoke to them, looking away and gesticulating something specific but uncomprehending to themself with their hands as they did so. They found the capacity to do so—to vocalize—rather quickly, but they stumbled over their words haplessly, stuttering and pausing rather abruptly and prominently despite only uttering three words. It was...irritating, for a moment, and they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to attempt speaking again to assert some sort of clarity or at least proficiency in the spoken language, or to cease speaking altogether. 

They struggled for a moment in their mind, before noticing that the man had yet to answer, and so they turned back towards him, only to find that he was now looking straight at them, rather dumbfounded. Thankfully, his attention wasn’t exactly discouraging so much as silly, and they briefly wondered if he’d heard them. They were about to repeat themself, when he suddenly shook his head some, and looked back at them with a gaze a bit more grounded, but just as relaxed as before.

“Ah, pardon me. I hadn’t expected you to speak—“ he began, “—so abruptly that is.“ he quickly corrected. “You looked like a rather...quiet fellow.” He said as he turned his head away. They wondered what he meant by that, before he resumed. “Oh, I do apologize. It seems I never answered your question. You wanted to know who I was, yes?”

They nodded in response, their right hand making a loose fist and nodding along at well. They wondered what that almost unconscious gesturing of theirs was about briefly, before the old man supplied their answer. 

“Ah-ha! So you do know sign!” He proclaimed. “I thought you might—“ he asserted, before seemingly catching himself, and quickly adding on—“I thought I’d seen you motioning words in Hand-Speak from the side of my eye, but I was a bit too preoccupied with—“ he gestured to the fire, prodding it pointedly with his staff to demonstrate. 

“Hah, han-dh spuh, spe-eak?” They questioned, not bothering to monitor their hands in question, as they seemed to be doing just fine echoing whatever it was that they were trying to say with no direction on their part. They were certainly confused, but that wasn’t anything new to them by now. They felt that they had the barest inkling as to what the old man was going on about anyways, but still, they waited for his answer.

“Hylian Hand-Speak, yes! People who can’t or don’t talk often communicate almost entirely by the language of sign. With their hands, as you did—while speaking, you did anyways...” his explanation trailed off into a mutter. He looked into the fire as if considering something for a moment, before dismissing the subject with the reassurance—“Most people in Hyrule know how to read Hand-Speak, so no worries...” He trailed off yet again, seeming to be entranced by the fire before him. Now they were even more confused. He never even answered their initial question. 

As if on cue, the old man promptly broke out of his listlessness to laugh. That was more than a tad unsettling, but he quickly reasoned his humor.

“My apologies still, my young friend! I seem to have evaded your question yet again.” He chuckled. “You’ll have to forgive this old man. My mind isn’t what it used to be. Often I find the days stretching on scarcely to my notice, jumping from one thing to the next in an effort to entertain myself—” he added—a sentiment that some subconscious part of them resonated with. 

“—but I’ll spare you my life’s story. I’m just an old fool who has lived here, alone, for quite some time now.” He supplemented, which they found to be a satisfying enough answer. To be honest, they weren’t sure what kind of answer they were even expecting. 

“I hope you’ll permit me a question...” he resumed, regaining their attention. “What brings a bright-eyed young soul such as yourself to these parts?” he asked. Now that was a kicker. 

Looking around, they realized that they hadn’t even thought to question where they were, so much as what they were doing (outside of collecting random things and creatures).

“Whe... where. Where are we-ee?” They asked, focusing on their pronunciation a little harder than before, producing a rather satisfying result. Still, their hands seemed to follow along better than their mouth. 

He smiled at them softly, no—sadly? He looked off in the distance beyond them for a moment, before speaking. 

“Answering a question with another question. That seems fair enough” he chuckled again. They were beginning to get used to the sound. He looked back at them for the umpteenth time, eyes a bit more hardened and intense for a split-second, seemingly set on an answer. “As I cannot imagine our meeting to be a simple coincidence...” he went on, “I shall tell you."

“This—“ he shifted his staff over to his left hand, moving it in a sweeping motion meant to gesture to the ground beneath them and the land before them, “—is the Great Plateau.” 

They stared at him vacantly, not quite processing, much to his seeming disappointment. He continued nonetheless.

“According to legend, this is the birthplace of the entire kingdom of Hyrule.” He added, making to stand with great effort—likely on account of his age. Once on his feet, he turned towards a large, ornate yet decrepit set of structures, pointing to the largest and most prominent of the lot with the end of his staff. They followed the motion with suddenly rapt attention, eyeing the grand building with a sense of awe. How they hadn’t noticed the thing before, they didn’t know.

_“You need to pay attention more.” the smooth and austere voice of a woman admonished, a cool set of dark fingers firmly tapping their right shoulder twice to snap them out of their stupor—_

They suddenly swerved around to look behind them, hand on their adorned stick in a mere moment, tugging it out of the rope and brandishing it at...nothing. Their head throbbed in the wake of the voice, but whether the ache was in protest to _it_ , or because of their very sudden and quick movements that left them somewhat dizzy on top of disoriented, they couldn’t discern. 

That wasn’t the same voice from before. It was lower, less hasty but more intense—and it was in an _entirely different language_ , yet one they _still_ understood. 

Their eyes scanned the landscape around them, before they turned slowly, almost threateningly towards the man they’d felt an onrush of enmity towards. 

The old man flinched at their abrupt hostility, despite knowing it was unlikely to be directed at himself. His doubts were proven true as they quickly deflated at his discomfort, casting what he guessed to be an apologetic glance his way before they directed their eyes off to the side, returning the branch they wielded to their back and impassively rubbing their shoulder. He brushed it off like he would the dirt on his knees, and looked back towards the temple. 

“That temple there...” he started up again, regaining their attention as they tentatively returned their sight to the edifice. “Long ago, it was the site of many sacred ceremonies. Ever since the decline of the kingdom nearly 100 years ago, it has sat abandoned, in a state of decay. Yet another forgotten entity...” his speech yet again waning into little more than a whisper. They had to lean in and strain their ears to catch the final sentence.

“A mere ghost of it’s former self...” he finished, eyes distant and glossy, before sitting back down near the fire, huddling closer to it than before. 

_‘The Great Plateau, Hyrule, Temple…’_ they thought, trying and failing to form some sort of mental map. None of these words registered in their mind. Nothing here made sense to them.

* * *

Wandering away from the old man (after pocketing his torch and a nearby axe), they soon came up on a ridge overlooking a lagoon. Peering down, they saw a ring of water lilies and algae, and on some enthusiastic impulse, they dived right into the deep, not even bothering to shed their clothing or branch. 

When they resurfaced, they’d been greeted by a small creature—a “Korok” or “Child of the Forest” as the being had called themself. Vaguely, they were aware that they were a tree spirit of some sort. The small spirit was as surprised to see them as they were the seedling, remarking how they were expecting someone by the name of “Hestu” and how they hadn’t even known that their kind—Hylians—could see them. Regardless, the Korok was quick to part with a small golden seed of theirs, and shoo them off. It was a strange, but not unwelcome encounter. They felt there were going to be a lot of those to come. 

They left the lagoon after grabbing a sword they found jammed into a rock on an isle, as well as a few fish and frogs in the water. Making their way back down the hill in a distracted manner, they stilled in sudden alert at the uncanny shuffle of long grass under a large tree in the distance, and they moved to blend into the shadow of a nearby apple tree. Someone— _something_ —new caught their eye. 

They focused on the grass, eyes narrowing at what they beheld. Further down the hill, they saw the profile of a blue, horned head of some sort of crouched pig-man. Their formerly fair mood sunk to abhorrence at the sight. It was a monster. 

_“Just a Bokoblin, my dearest.” the hearty and warm voice of a woman supplied, with a laugh._

They swiftly looked around again, only to find no one nearby, other than the monster. This voice came with no touch they could feel—no vision imagined—but it came all the same, clear and ringing through their head, pursued by the same quick headache and short bout of illness as before. Another voice, another language. This one was very distinct from the other two, whereas they sounded similar but derivative from one another, this one was an entirely different tongue with no pronounced similarities whatsoever. Not to mention that while the other two were particularly serious, this one was lively. Though it too was one of many strange things they’d experienced in the last few hours, it wasn’t exactly unsettling. At least not this voice. Not this time. 

_“Get behind it. Don’t let it hear you. Don’t let it see you.” insisted the smooth voice, as she swiftly patted their back to urge them forward._

They decided to heed its advice. 

They turned their attention back to the “Bokoblin“ which had yet to notice them, obscured in the shadows and uphill. Despite their altitude relative to the monster, they were technically still downwind, which they gauged by the small breeze that picked up their hair behind them. That meant that the creature wouldn’t catch on to their smell. Good.

Still crouching themself, they crawled behind the tree line, taking care to roll their feet from heel to palm with every step as they stalked along, until they were a couple of meters directly behind the thing. For a moment, they questioned what they were even doing—why had they endeavored to slip beneath this monster's notice? Just _what_ were they planning to—

 _“Take out your weapon. Take it by surprise. Do it quickly. Do it quietly.” the voice supplied._

As soon as they heard the word “weapon” they realized that this indeed was not Hylian like the voice that woke them up, or like the old man they’d met earlier spoke. 

This was the language on the Slate. 

The Bokoblin fell limp to the ground, before it disappeared in an ominous plume of purple and magenta smoke. They hadn’t even realized that they’d drawn their stick, let alone hooked it under the monster's chin before jerking it’s head to the side.

They felt a bout of concern-borne nausea hit them briefly, intermingling with their very incensed headache, all but dissipating when they saw that the Bokoblin had left some things behind when it dissipated. 

They walked away with a Bokoblin horn, two of it’s teeth, and a much bigger stick to replace the one they’d broken on the Bokoblin’s neck—towards the ruins of the Temple that old man had mentioned.

* * *

Climbing the last set of stairs, they snuck up on the Bokoblin standing idle near the entrance to the grand Temple, setting out to dispatch it much in the same way they had the others that were ambling around the lower temple grounds.

In the last hour, they’d managed to take down a few more of the pig-like monsters, as well as two things that warm, lively voice in their head dubbed _“Chuchu’s”_. They collected a few of those creature’s parts and some nearby weaponry, but most excitedly, they happened upon a pair of trousers and boots that actually fit them. The pants were loose around their hips, made out of a stretchy yet durable sort of soft cotton canvas, and the boots were of a similarly comfortable leather. They quickly disrobed the worn out set they’d had on prior, though, not exactly wanting to dispose of them completely, they fiddled around with the slate before they managed to open a menu labeled “Armor.” Clicking the first empty slot they observed, they were granted a unique option.

{REGISTER}

Clicking it, then extending out their right hand, still holding the old, threadbare short-pants and boots, they waited. Then, in a flash of that familiar blue light, it disappeared from their hand, and reappeared in the previously empty slot on the Slate. That earned a small, victorious laugh from them. 

The final Bokoblin they surmised to be in near proximity to the Temple grounds fell just as the others did, dropping only a club and a purple, pulsing organ—both of which were eagerly added to their collection. Since the amount of weapons the slate could hold was already at capacity, they begrudgingly traded a stick in favor of the Boko Club, hurling the branch far off to the side where it practically shattered when it made contact with one of the strange statues littered all over the place. 

They looked at the statue—no, not a statue—it was something else _entirely_. They walked over to the one they hurled the stick at. They’d seen one or two of these things lower down on the Temple grounds, in one of the smaller ruined structures and in the open courtyard near a shallow bed of water, but they’d been too distracted with nearby Bokoblins to take much notice of something decidedly sedentary, and ultimately a non-threat. 

It looked...interesting. Genuinely. Like an intricate, oddly shaped, upside down pot. They giggled at the comparison. They brushed their hands against it, absently realizing that it was made of the same material that lined the tomb they came out of that morning. It was inscribed with the same loose and wavy pattern of stone like line work, with circles and indents where they assumed some sort of inner light would shine through, like how it did in the strange cave. 

They briefly wondered what it would look like if it were illuminated, before looking around the front of the temple again. There truly was...a large number of them...

They suddenly shivered, and lost their prior humor. 

Walking away from those...things, they took their first step inside the Temple. It was massive, and just as the old man had mentioned, in a state of total decay. They noted the broken windows, chunks of wall high and low missing, a partially caved in roof, and so much debris covering the floor; above all, demanding the most of their attention, was the tremendous statue in the back and center of the Temple. It looked to be a rounded, simplified depiction of a person with the suggestion of arms brought together in prayer, and thick wings that branched out on either side of it. 

In awe, they came closer, only to descry that the incredible carving was surrounded by a ring of smaller replicas. As the sun was setting, their eyes traced back up to the pale stone, the face of which was glowing gold in the last traces of light that could reach it. The face that was smiling down at them. 

* * *

Waking up early, they quickly vacated their position behind the great statue’s feet, where they slept the night prior, to get started on searching the place for things to store in the slate, as they hadn’t the day before. They originally considered going off to sleep in one of the trees outside, or on the roof of the Temple. Somewhere high up and away from potential threats, but considering that they were too tired to so much as clear out the usable supplies in the vast Temple, they settled for somewhere just out of sight, with a roof over their head. 

Finding a Travelers bow (which they eagerly equipped), a dozen or so arrows, and a lovely orange gem the slate dubbed “Amber,” they set about climbing to the top of the Temple from the inside. It took a few minutes to get the hang of how and where they should grip the stone, and a few more minutes to make it to the outer top of the building, but soon enough they were walking on the roof, taking in the smell of distant rain and enjoying the view of a clouded sky. That’s when they heard it. 

Some terribly loud roar, given how they could scarcely make out the source. Crouching down and narrowing their eyes, they could barely make out the blip that was what they determined to be the origin of the noise. They couldn’t quite make out what it was on sight alone, so they listened carefully for the next bellow. When it came, clearer than before due to their focus, so too did that helpful, elucidation.

_“Lynel.” that warm voice whispered in their ear._

It was as if she too didn’t want to alert the far off monster. They didn’t exactly know why, but they got the gist of it.

 _‘Dangerous’_ they thought in response. 

* * *

They found a Soldier's Bow at the top of the tower, which they equipped in favor of the Traveler’s Bow they found prior, as well as another Korok, who laughed and gave them some spiel relating to the game of hide and seek they were playing, before giving them another one of those seeds they stored away. Intent on climbing down, they were making their way back to the portion of the caved-in ceiling of the Temple they had climbed out of, when they spotted a ladder that led down the outside of the building. They flustered in embarrassment for a moment, before getting over their failure to notice something particularly useful and sliding down the ladder. Much easier. 

They decided to sweep the perimeter of the Temple for anything else they’d missed, be it enemies or potential supplies, but found only more of those not-statues from earlier. Still, they decided to pick around every single one of them on the Temple grounds for something useful after one of them yielded something the slate scanned and dematerialized with no prompting. They walked away with numerous parts the slate had recognized as “Ancient.” Screws, Shafts, Springs, and Gears. They thought the collection of items were pretty neat, even if they had no obvious use to them. 

Sitting down on the decrepit fountain at the base of the Temple grounds, they were meddling with the slate again. They’d managed to bring up a separate application on the screen that read as “Map” but was empty and useless, save for a functional marker feature that seemed rather futile to use as the map itself was featureless. There were the empty displays when they switched their tabs over from the map and menu features, two of which had small, identical notices in the corner of the screen that read, “The Sheikah Slate data has been damaged.”

Sheikah? 

Something began to stir in their chest—something uncomfortable. That word seemed...familiar? Was that the right word for this? But just as soon as some indescribable cognizance began to seize them and possibly spark something in their mind, it was smothered by the void that was their lack of recognition, and rendered just another subject tossed aside in favor of something more interesting and distracting. 

—Like how with just a bit more messing around, they managed to unlock a feature that let them zoom in on things far away, particularly surprised when suddenly they were looking at an image of the ground magnified intensely. 

They were looking around with the zoom feature when they spotted a small, far off structure. Something they could barely gauge to be made of a similar material in similar make to their former tomb, with the same raised, sinuous patterns enveloping it’s entirety. Just like the Slate and the not-statues. That was their next destination, they decided. 

* * *

As they made their way over, they dispatched a few archer Bokoblins, two of which occupied floating platforms made of wood held up by roped creatures inflated to the point of duress. They floated above a large fissure that gaped in the flat of some old, man made foundation, and had since filled in with either rain or ground water. One of the Bokoblins had the high ground on them, standing not on a platform, but a raised portion of the stone-brick construction. 

They focused in on the octopus-like creatures that propagated the lift of the shabby wood constructs, an idea barely starting to form in their mind before it was interrupted by a sudden pang of pain. Not unbearable, but very annoying, especially considering what it indicated.

_“Sky Octorok.” The warmer, deeper voice had clarified._

_“Shoot one.” The cooler, smooth voice suggested. “Bokoblins can’t swim.”_

They did just that, the advice finally giving them cause to use their bow. Hiding mostly behind a large rock so as to not be seen by one monster that may have alerted the others, they aimed, and—

_“Deep breaths,” said a soft, distinctly male voice, as a pair of dark fingers tapped on their elbow to indicate that they needed to fix their draw on the arrow—_

They yelped, letting the arrow fly preemptively, with little power and a completely erroneous trajectory. They ducked down behind the rock as the Bokoblin perched on some of the higher stone foundations inspected the landscape in their direction. They then whipped their head around, mostly aware that it was unlikely that they’d find anything. 

The amount of voices and sensory input they’d been imagining up to this point was starting to get jumbled up. This new one was in which language? The same as the Slate and the smoother voice, they determined. This was getting to be confusing and irritating, their only solace being that the voices only ever had useful information to divulge. 

They sighed, quickly accepting the silver lining of their unusual predicament, and decided to just follow along. Checking over the edge of their hiding spot, they confirmed that the high, ground lookout was in fact looking away from them, and quickly stood up to take aim at the inflated Octoroks. If they were accurate, they could take down two of them with a single shot from their vantage, specifically one from each of the platforms. 

They began to breathe deeply, trying to follow along with what the newest voice had to say—a part of them hoping that it would pipe up again, and be more specific. They nocked the arrow, and peered at their targets with mostly their left eye—

_“Back straight, arms perpendicular to that.”_

They made minute adjustments to their stance. 

_“Take a deep breath, hold—“_

They inhaled sharply.

_“aim, and—“_

They released on their exhale, letting the arrow fly, and sure enough it struck true. The platforms went vertical as the Octoroks on each began to struggle with the sudden re-division of the load. They heard the squealing of the drowning Bokoblins, and evidently, so did the main Bokoblin lookout. As it looked on in a panic at the other two, They ran up behind it and pushed it into the water as well.

Not ten minutes later, they’d dragged all the dropped loot and weapons to shore, Before storing it all away and crossing to the small building they’d first had their sights on.

* * *

They were at a loss for what to do. The small stupa-looking thing was completely inert. It didn’t do anything when they held up the slate to a pedestal—one that bore that same, strange eye—like mark that the slate did, only not illuminated-that rested on the foundation outside its slight overhang where they observed another arrangement of non-metal slabs they had been expecting to open. They read the word repeated on the door over and over again. It read “Dungeon” as in a place to be explored—apparently just one they couldn’t access. Huffing, they turned to sit on the inactive interface, choosing instead to look through the zoom function of the slate. 

Off in the sky, in what they assumed to be the North-East if their orientation on the blank map if the Slate could be trusted, was something incredibly far off that hung in the air. They could scarcely make out any details of the thing with the scope's limited zoom, and had honestly thought it to be a bird before they focused in on it. It seemed to slowly move back and forth, left to right over the course of a few minutes. Strange.

They looked over to the forest they’d gotten a fair view of back when they’d first woken up, and briefly considered going there. They also saw a Bokoblin camp on the other side of the fissure they’d only just cleared...

Before they could make up their mind however, it began to rain. Despite it only being the middle of the day, with how tired they felt as is, they decided to wait it out the showers and retreated over to the seeming doorway of the structure, there being just enough width to the overhang to dull the downpour that beat at an angle against its opposite side. 

* * *

As the rain came down well into the night, they awoke from their dreamless sleep with a start, briefly spasming before they’d fully come to. The wind and the water it carried had just changed direction, effectively drenching them. Sitting up and quickly accounting for their weapons before relaxing, they looked out into the rain. As it pelted the raised platform of their current shelter, they traced the indents of the words inscribed on the thoroughly shut door behind them. 

Despite being a little damp and VERY exposed in their current position, they were relatively calm. It must have had something to do with the rain itself. They liked the sound of the water hitting the ground, and the smell that permeated the moist air. It propagated enough serenity to put them in a rather contemplative mood while they waited for their limbs to become just as alert and coordinated as their mind. 

They briefly wondered about the voices they’d imagined. The first was incomprehensible. An urgent, garbled mess that did little more than wake them up, in the language the old man indicated as “Hylian.” The second had been stern in it’s reprimand, but also methodical in advice, and spoke in the language of the slate. The third spoke in a language they had yet to tie down to anything observed, and simply identified different monsters in a rather exultant tone. And now, yet another voice had joined the medley. Same language as the second, but it had only so far commented on their archery? 

They harshly exhaled in agitation, before getting up, donning their gear, and heading off into the dark deluge. 

* * *

They took out a camp of sleeping Bokoblins and their lookout with the sword they’d found nearly two days prior, hardly bothering with stealth in the rain that mostly concealed their footsteps and obscured their visage. The monsters had little supplies other than some arrows, some food, and what their bodies left behind, so they decided to take the lid on a covered pot the monsters had been crowded around while sleeping too. 

They wandered off blindly in the rain, until they stumbled upon a mound of boulders, which a Bokoblin with a sword and shield had fallen asleep not too far from. Taking it out and absconding with it’s possessions, they hardly paid mind to the oddness of the structure beneath the large rocks, and what they obscured in the heavy downpour. 

* * *

They’d taken out a pair of archers, as well as two more Bokoblin camps and a couple of bat-like creatures called “ _Keese_ ” before the rain slowed to a drizzle and the rising sun broke through the dispersing clouds. It was in the still gloomy weather that they were currently digging around the wreckage of a particularly destroyed not-statue, pulling away with a few things that the slate accepted into its storage.

They were nursing a headache they got after they were caught off guard by what looked to be the skeleton of a Bokoblin climbing out of the ground. The _"_ _Stalkoblin'"_ clambered to it’s feet and aimed a bow at them, and they reflexively lunged at it, swiping the weapon out of it’s grasp along with one of it’s arms. As they gaped at the stubborn, still wiggling arms that refused to let go of the bow, the monster chucked a rock with its still intact arm that hit them square in the forehead. They managed to shrug off the hit and subsequently drive a rusted sword through it’s exposed spine and shatter the dropped skull with the heel of their boot. 

It was at the insistence of their still-throbbing head that they took a break from plundering the local monster camps, and shifted gears to focus on scavenging more of the unique ancient scrap. 

By the time they were done and satisfied with the current not-statue they were probing, they’d caught sight of another they could inspect, surrounded by a series of stone walls they could only assume formed some sort of fencing, but for what, they didn’t know. Regardless, they were keen on exploring it all. They jogged over to the newest not-statue, when their ears picked up on a sudden, loud clicking. Looking around for a brief moment, they quickly determined the source to be that of the thing they had been approaching. 

They took one more curious step foreword, as the clicking grew in volume, before regretting that decision _immensely_.

The upper portion of the not-statue began to move about, rotate back and forth, as the runic patterns they’d earlier surmised as capable of illuminating did just that, flickering to life in a _malicious_ bright magenta—like the plume of smoke emitted by a dying monster, but far more concentrated.

Then, they found themselves staring into the bright blue eye of the thing, as it stared right back. That color, that _eerie_ blue that they woke up to, and the bright, ruddish purple that they _despised_ —

Then a red beam manifested on their chest. They looked down, and then back to the _vile_ thing. It’s clicking started up again, in a gradual but quick up-tick— _counting down_ —

They froze in place, like a deer that caught first sight of a predator. 

_The clicking sped up—_

A part of them tried to will their legs to move, to no avail. They couldn’t even turn their head, terrified to look at the thing but loathe to look away, tears beginning to sting at their wide-blown eyes—

_Getting faster—_

The drizzle of rain, the clouded sky, the pain in their chest so tight that there may as well have been a clamp on their lungs. Something claustrophobic and horrifying that _hurt_ that they could almost remember—

_Faster—_

They were screaming in their head, hysterical and _irate_ , switching from one language to another, asking— _begging_ for someone to tell them what to do. 

The clicking stopped. 

_They saw a bright flash. Their pupils constricted. In an instant, their hands were at the pot lid on their back, bringing it up their chest, over that red homing beam._

* * *

_They opened their eyes, and found only darkness. Just like before. Before when? They couldn’t remember. They just waited._

_Waited for the light to come to them. Just like before._

_But no matter how long they waited, seconds, days, weeks, months, years—decades._

_She never did come. They still waited._

_Then, in the distant and dark, something grew closer to them, dragging itself on limbs sickly and small, gasping and shrieking with every centimeter it gained in it’s path. Not quite traveling towards them, as it faced a practically perpendicular direction, going around them but somehow still getting closer—like it traveled in a spiral, with them in the center. So far away but so very present, even when obscured by a fog of black._

_They looked on at it in such a genuinely curious manner, devoid of repulsion or pity, and such a gaze seemed to grant them the clarity needed to see it’s ill-delineated form for the parts of it that stood out the most._

_They saw a huge, grotesque thing, with magnificent, magenta runes leaping off of it’s body. An ever rippling cloak of raw, dark flesh stretched over pieces of things inorganic and bright and orange and blue and deadly—_

* * *

A nightmare. Their first dream had been a nightmare. 

They woke up in a start at the base of yet another one of those stupa-shaped constructions, the midday suns chastising their choice to sleep out in the open by blinding their blinking eyes. 

Shaking off their seeming night terror and sitting up slowly, they realized that they had no idea what had just happened, or where they were, seeing how stone walls enclosed all sides of the area they cohabitated with the tiny, non-metal building. They grabbed their things, their sword, shield, bow, and arrows messily scattered about, before donning all the reorganized equipment. Checking their hip for the slate, they attempted to haul themself over one of the walls. 

Only for them to see another non-statue. They pushed themself back and off of the wall, falling to the ground. Landing painfully on their back, they rolled over coughing, then hyperventilating. 

It immediately came back to them. Mere hours ago, they were looking around the outside of this maze for more of those “Ancient Parts” among the series on broken down and decaying not-statues, when one of those THINGS proved their moniker true, turning out to be not so broken after all. 

They cringed at the thought of their panic, how it nearly cost them their life. Thankfully, they’d managed to...

To...

They didn’t know. They didn’t know what happened next. It was just _terror_ , and _anger_ , and then _nothing_. 

They pushed off of their hands and knees, and got up to make their way over to the wall they just attempted to climb. They peeked over the edge at the potentially deadly machination—only just now realizing that that is exactly what it was.

A machine. A deadly one. At least when it worked, that is. 

Thankfully, this one, too, seemed to be inactive. They tentatively clambered down the wall, refusing to take their eyes off of the machine, until they rounded the corner of a another, and found themselves out of the stone maze. They sprinted away from it. 

* * *

They traveled along the border of the Plateau until dark. They sometimes had to hide in patches of tall grass, or even slip down the wall, clinging to stone brick over a definitively fatal drop, just to avoid the sight of the observant as-all- _hells_ Lynel that occupied the plains. At least now the proximity coupled with the zoom function on their slate allowed them to identify it as a ” _White Lynel_ ” which they humbly understood to be something FAR beyond their capacity to deal with. 

They reached a far off cabin they’d spotted earlier by the time the sky was clear of clouds and full of stars, where they’d yet again met the old man, much to their surprise. According to him, this was where he made his permanent residence on the Plateau. 

“It’s not much, but you’re free to roam it all you like.” he offered as he sat by the fire, propping his staff against the very log he reclined on. 

Taking him up on that offer, they’d soon explored the entirety of his small and scare home, nicking his pitchfork and grabbing a handful of vegetables he’d foraged in excess—called “Spicy Peppers” according to the slate—before taking a particular interest in a book that they figured was his diary. 

They quietly giggled at some of the stuff he’d written, while absently processing that what they were reading was in fact the written form of Hylian. They closed the book and headed out to the fire, to sit with the old man and watch the stars. 

* * *

The old man was out before they had woken up. They spotted him in the distance chopping trees, and so they decided to spend the early hours helping him with that, though he seemed initially insistent that they “not waste their time.”

“Not a waste.” They said, without stuttering, but with hands too busy with an axe to sign. They figured that their tendency to speak both verbally and manually was an engrained one, though why that was even the case was a question they didn’t bother with. In the end, the two of them split the firewood that they’d gathered together, and headed back to the cabin. 

“You’re free to use my cooking pot, should you find yourself hungry.” he made yet another kind offer. “I, however, require quite a bit of rest after that workout! I’m not as young as I used to be!” He laughed, before ducking into the cabin, presumably to take a nap. 

Turning towards the cooking pot, they briefly considered the offer, before withdrawing a litany of food-stuffs from the slate, and prepping them to be cooked. 

Maybe an hour later, they had a couple of omelets they’d managed to convince the slate to store away after a bit of tinkering with the settings they still didn’t completely understand, as well a host of generally inedible dishes that they forced themself to down so as not to waste the supplies that they’d gathered and unfortunately bastardized. They were finishing up the last dish just as the old man had come out of the cabin, finished with his nap. 

Scooping up the contents of the pot onto a slab of bark they ripped off a tree, they bounded over to him, practically thrusting it into his face. 

“Wha-whoa! What’s this about, hm?” The old man questioned, a little caught off guard, but not quite startled. He focused in on the food they’d all but shoved in his face, and found it being a rather simple dish consisting of fish, bird, and pepper, with some Hylian Herb to season. It took him half a minute to realize just why they’d gotten so excited about the food, before he bellowed a hearty, genuine laugh, much to the younger Hylian’s confusion. 

“I see someone’s been reading my journal!” He quipped, laughing all the same. “But am I ever so glad you did! Wait here for a moment, would you?” He said before heading back into the cabin, re-emerging shortly with a bundle of cloth. 

“What do you say we trade, hm?” he offered. “My old Warm Doublet for that there dish?” He questioned with a slightly fuller smile than the one they were accustomed to seeing him bear. 

* * *

Oh. They did NOT like the cold, they recently decided. 

After receiving the Warm Doublet from the old man, and being particularly excited about the gloves and belts that came with it, they took off that very evening to scale the mountain across a ravine not too far from the cabin they inhabited for almost a day, getting across by means of a felled tree. They plucked some Rushrooms, Found a rather hefty hammer, as well as another one of those conical structures, and now they were racing down a snowy mountain, wanting to get someplace warm, but mostly trying to evade a persistent group of Bokoblins that tailed them in the unfavorable environment. 

At some point they’d turned to look over their shoulder for a moment too long—they could have _sworn_ they saw that old man looking down at them from atop a distant, snow covered ledge—resulting in them taking a tumble over a snow covered rock. They fell while running with their shield drawn (two arrows from the aforementioned monsters sticking out on it rather prominently), landing on it and skidding down the mountain several dozen meters. As unfortunate and embarrassing as the blunder was, it did happen to give them a rather fun idea. 

Soon enough, they were deliberately riding on their shield, enjoying the speed almost as much as they didn’t enjoy the cold. They spotted a stone arch, beyond which they could make out greenery and the back of the Temple, and so they kicked their Boko Shield out from under their feet and made a break for the practically magical segregation of the climates. 

They decided against exploring the snowy region of the Plateau. They wouldn’t be taking another foot onto the snow unless they absolutely needed to. 

* * *

They’d been foraging in the forest for several days. Having found a few more Koroks, accumulated dozens of eggs, herbs, and new types of mushrooms, as well as hunted some wild boar with the old man (who, surprisingly enough, showed them how to skin and flesh their hides), they figured that they were satisfied with their collection. They’d already taken out a few Bokoblin camps in the large wood’s perimeter, along with some large rock creature the deep voice in their head identified as a “ _Talus_ ” which dropped a few precious gems and some flint in its dissipation.

Now they just walked, almost leisurely, with only the light of the moon and the soft blue glow of a beautiful sort of bell flower. The smell was fragrant and sweet, and just looking at it calmed them immensely. They held it tightly, practically crushing it’s stem in an effort to stop the Slate from claiming it, which was a silly theory to be sure, but one that surprisingly worked all the same. Speaking of the Slate, they’d yet to see just what type of flower it was in the catalog, and evidently, they didn’t need to. 

_“Blue Nightshade, Flower.” Her lively voice so uncharacteristically soft in tone as she wrapped her warm, dark bronze fingers around their hand making her gold and wood bangles clink against each other. Their hand seem so much smaller in comparison._

Well, obviously it was a flower. 

By now they’d figured that when the words and the visions and the touches came briefly, so too did the pain, all of which passed through them like the wind. 

They unclenched their fist from around the stem of the flower, and watched as it’s soft blue gave way to one far more garish. They didn’t feel the need to pull out the Slate to verify if that voice was correct. A part of them knew it was. They continued to walk along the edge of the forest well into the morning, until they ran out of trees to stride alongside and chose the border of the Plateau to serve as their company instead, watching their feet more than what lay beyond the wall. 

They were aimlessly tracing along the dilapidated, stone-crafted perimeter of the Great Plateau, dragging their gloved fingertips against the old bricks before the stone fell away in another crevice of the wall’s own desecration. They briefly pondered just how old the crafted barrier that encased the raised lands had to be for them to be in such a state of what was assumed to be natural decay. It was then that they thought back to the Temple. The destruction there was comparatively… intentional. 

Their thoughts diverted back to those malicious machines, littered all about the place. It really should have occurred to them that those _things_ had something to do with the state of disarray the Temple was in. They looked to have segmented extremities—unlike the active ones in the maze—and they momentarily considered if those strange extensions could propagate movement. They shuddered at the thought. 

With that assumption in mind, the scene they beheld at the Temple suddenly shifted in their head, with a newfound clarity shining light onto what they now understood to be an event far grimmer than the desolations of time. 

Those machines had looked decisively intact despite their inert nature, as if they were simply paused in place, paused in time—paused in the middle of some sort of siege. 

They felt their fists curling against stone, and they trembled in front of the segment of brick wall they had pressed their forehead against to ground themself. The stone felt cool against their blood-flushed face. 

They didn’t like these thoughts, and still they came anyways. No amount of fighting with monsters or collecting little oddities would make them abade. They felt a distinct pull back towards that old place of worship, as if something was beckoning them to confront the discomfort that was the unknown. 

After much deliberation, as well as them taking out a Bokoblin tree-camp, they finally decided to make their way back to the Temple. It’s not as if they had much else to do anyhow.

* * *

As they traversed the hills in the dying light of the setting sun, they came across yet another Bokoblin camp—it was as if the Great Plateau had no shortage of them—only this time, the lookout actually spotted them. They weren’t certain of their chances at taking down the whole camp when fully alert, as opposed to sleeping. 

In an instant, they hurled themself over the crate they’d originally meant to hide behind, pulling out their bow midair.

_“That’s it. You’ve almost got it.” he encouraged. “Now just apply the lesson Elle gave you to your archery.”_

Elle?

As soon as they nocked the arrow, it was as if time had slowed. They hyper-focused in on the target that was the Bokoblin archer’s head, and quickly exhaled. 

_“Atta’ voi” the soft-spoken man said, grasping their shoulder when they landed._

They’d grown used to the phantom touches.

The monster dropped from it’s perch not too far from it’s slumbering companions, but thankfully, none of them so much as stirred. They made quick work of them, and continued across the hills, towards the Temple. 

* * *

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” The Old Man asked. 

They stopped by the original campsite of his that they’d come across after they first...

“No.” They answered simply, prodding the fire with a stick in their left hand, signing the same response with their right. “I don’t think so.”

It was nearly morning. The night sky had finally begun to shift a few shades lighter, growing into a more saturated sort of blue as time dragged on. That was the kind of blue they liked. Dark and muted, like the pre-morning or post-sunset sky. 

“Are you certain?” he pried, his face suddenly looking far more grave than they’d ever seen before, though it may have just been the way the fire cast shadows on his wrinkled face. They looked into his eyes, and for a moment, they could have sworn that they’d seen them flicker from a grey that reflected orange to a watery green that almost glowed. “Are you certain that you haven’t...I don’t know, forgotten anything?”

“I just...” they started to answer, not quite sure how to finish. 

Now that they’d thought of it, they’d seen him practically everywhere on the Plateau. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that he was capable of getting anywhere that they could, even in his old age, but for him to have always been there, just when they were. Here, at the camp when they woke up, at his cabin just as they’d arrived, staring down at them from the top of a snowy mountain that they refused to climb on account of the cold, or deep in the forest, hunting boar just the same as themself. Now, here he was again. 

“I don’t...” they attempted to answer again, “Don’t know.” They finished. Simple as that. 

They didn’t know a thing. 

* * *

They only made out the words “Tower” and “Map” as some strange, golden marker showed up on their slate.

It was that first voice, the one that spoke in Hylian. The one that woke them up. Evidently, it saw fit to wake them up again. 

As they ran away from the rock outcrop they’d awoken under (alone), they briefly suspected that the voice was clearer now only by the virtue that they actually _wanted_ to listen. 

They cursed themself for missing the obvious protrusion of a man-made edifice from the mound of rock and dirt, rain having hidden it away that night they’d come so close to finding it on their own. They really _did_ need to start paying attention. 

As they tossed ruble and rocks aside, trying to get at the pedestal they just _knew_ was waiting for them, they felt something strumming the air around them, like an energy that was building to some sort of peak, like tension in a chain about to shatter. All the while, they barely made out Hylian babbling in the back of their mind, urging them on. 

When they’d finally found it, they inserted their slate with little fanfare. And after a minute or so of tremors, they were abruptly launched into the air—or rather, the tower was; they just so happened to be on it. 

* * *

Their head throbbed when they turned it to the side. They opened their eyes to see their weapons and arrows had scattered about, and they thrust their hand down to the left side of their hip, panicking when it came up empty of the slate. It took them a moment to remember that no, they didn’t lose it, they’d just placed it in the pedestal of the small tower that just became a BIG tower, if their view off to the side of the formerly low to the ground platform was anything to go by. They sat up and got to rearranging their items, finishing just as that Hylian voice had started up again. They got up to their feet.

“ _Remember..._ ” it echoed quietly in their head. 

They turned to the Castle, off in the distance. How they knew where it came from, they didn’t know, but they did _see._

_“Try...try to remember...”_

_‘But I can’t.’_ they thought back at it—at _her_. They looked at the beacon of light that shone brighter than the sun from the center of a decrepit Castle draped in darkness that flowed in putrid veil—they were looking at _her_.

* * *

_“You must hurry, Ahnu.”_ She pleaded. 

_“Before it’s too late...”_ She crooned

“Who are you?” They asked in kind. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for taking time to read the first chapter! It really means a lot to me, and I hope that the slow start of the first dozen or so chapters doesn't deter you. This is going to be my first ever multi-chapter fanwork, and as said in the summary, this is going to be a LONG fic, and I plan on sticking to it all the way--and I hope you will too. Here we go!


	2. Chapter 2--  Please Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for for them to start doing what they're told.

The voice was still hard to hear. It had a muffled quality akin to being spoken just under the surface of water, but it was loud and resonant all the same, the words seeming to curl in on themselves as they reverberated through their skull. 

They redundantly questioned just why it was so obscured and distant, as they made their way down the tower. It was like someone calling out across a great distance, so far away that they were just a speck of themself to the onlooker, as the slightest of winds drowned out all indications that they were even talking, or yelling, or screaming.

They quickly came to the conclusion that that was exactly the situation they were in. Just a curious bystander bearing the brunt of someone from somewhere far away wailing into the void. Only no, they weren’t just a witness. They were, somehow, involved in all this. They were trapped in the void as well, and they couldn’t begin to understand how to navigate their way out. There wasn’t exactly a map of their mind—not that such a thing would be of much help considering that they felt it was particularly barren. 

Well, barren save a few other voices. Voices, they realized, that weren’t just someone calling out to them, despite the distance that muddled their directions and urging. Voices whose clarity stemmed from the fact that they likely resonated from within themself, as opposed to from some distant, desperate source. The first voice was a real person, calling out to them across a vast land they wanted nothing to do with. The rest came from some deep, bedim part of their otherwise empty mind, enshrouded in ambiguity and little else. The first voice was real. The rest weren’t. 

* * *

They finally made contact with solid earth, just as they heard the voice of someone they were truly familiar with call out, as said individual approached them yet again from...the sky?

They looked up towards where they heard the shout, and sure enough, there was the old man, floating down towards them with what looked to be a series of bowed, connected pieces of wood, with a tarp of cloth catching air above the contraption. To say that they were a tad dumbfounded was something of an understatement. 

Landing in a hard crouch that they were sure wasn’t good for someone of his age, he retracted the construction of cloth and wood off to his side—it was as if it vanished from thin air the moment it was out of their sight, hands that held it behind himself pulling away with only his staff, which seemed to spontaneously manifest in kind. 

“My, my...” he began, pulling them out of their confused daze. “It would seem we have quite the enigma here. This tower—“ he gestured to the tower behind them, to which they didn’t even bother to turn and examine, considering that they had just finished climbing down it. “—and others just like it have erupted across the land, one after another!” he exclaimed, sweeping his staff in a motion that indicated just how widespread he meant to indicate.

At that claim, they did turn around. Stepping back from the tower, and doing a quick sweep of the horizon beyond the Great Plateau, they spotted a few towers just at a glance. 

“It is almost as though...” he said, trailing off in his typical, grave fashion. They tried to listen to him, as they looked out into the extended world they’d—perhaps intentionally—paid little attention to. Always stealing quick glances at the landscape that made them feel ill, or looking down the sides of the Plateau’s border, down to the ground that beckoned them and terrified them all the same, but never stopping to take in the sights of the world they seemed keen to otherwise ignore. Suddenly, they could no longer manage to keep doing that. 

“...A long-dormant power has awoken quite suddenly.” he finished the earlier thought. They shivered some in response. 

Turning back to him, they looked upon the face of a man that knew more than he’d let on. A man who seemed to look right through them. A man who’s eyes seemed to reflect their own. 

“If you do not mind me asking...” he drawled out, and if it were anything related to what they’d just went through—which they had a feeling it was—then they  _ would  _ in fact mind very much. Regardless, they listened to him intently. “Did anything... odd occur while you were atop that tower?” he predictably asked.

‘Other than the fact that I was on top of it when it launched upwards?’ they signed in a somewhat irritated fashion, not quite in touch with their voice at the moment. They didn’t find it particularly odd that he knew where they were, or that he knew that they had something to do with the tower—especially since he’d probably seen them making their way down the gargantuan thing. What they  _ did  _ find odd was how specific and prodding his question was. It was almost as if he  _ knew. _

“Hah! Yes, I figured that might have been the case.” He stated, letting their bite roll off his back like the wind. “But I digress. It’s just... you looked rather alarmed, up on that tower. When you faced the Castle, it seemed almost as if...” he trailed off, almost expectant of them to finish the thought. Not taking the bait, they stared at him skeptically, every muscle in their body pulled taut in apprehension. How could he have possibly seen them? 

He sighed deeply at their continued silence, casting his gaze briefly to the ground and clasping both hands over the top of his staff.

“It seems I still have a ways to go when it comes to earning your trust. Fair enough” he conceded. Looking back up at them, he stated—“It looked as if you’d heard something.” 

They flinched at the accusation. 

“Oh-ho! Hit the nail on the head, did I?” he barked, his laughter sounding somehow hollow, as if it were empty of sentiment. “What was it that you heard, hm? Something like a voice? Something you recognized?” he kept questioning. 

Their head swam at the rapid-fire inquiry that made them beyond uncomfortable. He picked at all the things they absolutely did NOT want to think about. At their prolonged silence, he huffed. 

“Well, I assume you’ve at least caught sight of that atrocity enshrouding the castle?” He asked, turning to face the accursed view, gesturing towards it with his staff. Reluctantly, they looked back at the abomination that was the edifice enveloped by evil-incarnate. 

“That...” he began.

_ “The beast...”  _ she called it. 

“—is Calamity Ganon.”

* * *

“There it festers, building it’s strength for the moment it will unleash it’s blight upon the land once again.” He spoke in a tone far too neutral—far too accustomed to the miserable reality that was the state of the world. Shaking his head, returning both hands to his staff as he pulled it back in towards his chest. He gazed long and hard at the Castle. “It would appear that moment is fast approaching.”

_ “When the beast regains it’s true power, this world will face it’s end.” _ Her words echoed in their head. 

Turning only his head to face them, he began, “I must ask you, courageous one...”

They looked back at him, bewildered by his choice of words. Courageous? What about them had he thus far observed to be particularly valorous? Them sneaking up on every Bokoblin in sight? Killing monsters only when they were distracted or asleep, and taking whatever they left behind only to move on to the next camp they could plunder? What did he see in them that they didn’t themself?

“Do you intend to make your way to the castle?” He finally inquired. They looked at him as if he were insane. A fair assumption on their part, all things considered. 

To go to that place, where that  _ thing  _ was. Why would they  _ ever  _ want to do that? Why did it seem like he wasn’t really asking? Like he was expecting something of them? Why did they feel like they didn’t have a choice?

That constricting feeling in their chest returned, and their throat felt tight when they tried to force out words that just wouldn’t come. Their gloved hands came up to tug at the collar of their shirt, balling in the fabric into tight fists they tucked closely into their chest as their body began to tilt forward. They tried to keep looking him in the eyes, but his placid scrutiny became too much for them, and their gaze fell to the ground. Practically hunched over at this point, they wanted nothing more than to curl up on the ground and not have to think. 

Their reaction was... less than affirmative, if their despondency was anything to go by. The old man let out a beleaguered sigh, closing his eyes for a moment in his own bout of dismay. Regardless, he saw fit to least advise them further. 

“Here, on this isolated Plateau, we are surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs, with no way down.” he started, hoping to regain their attention, to some avail seeing how they peered back up at him. “If you were to try and jump off, no death could be more certain, or more foolish.” He distantly hoped, in the back of his mind, that that statement alone made them draw no particularly dark conclusions, and so quickly added on—“Of course, if you had a Paraglider like mine, that would be quite another story.”

“Pah-pahr, pahr-ah—“ they tried to say “Paraglider“ with little success, the word getting lost in their head and scrambled in their mouth. Their throat felt as if it were constricting on the air that left them into an increasingly wavering hiss, practically muting their voice the longer they attempted to vocalize. They didn’t know how to sign that word either. 

‘What is P-A-R-A-G-L-I-D-E-R’ they asked with their still-trembling hands, not sure if they’d spelt it right. They were momentarily distracted by his assertion, but their body hadn’t quite gotten the message and was still slightly shaking. 

“Oho ho! Piqued your interest, I see!” he exclaimed, suddenly back to his jubilant facade, as if someone flipped a switch on him. “Yes, I didn’t come soaring down here on my own feathery wings, you know!” he joked, to little response from the younger, serious Hylian. 

Ah. The thing made of wood and cloth that disappeared behind his back. 

“Worry not—“ he quickly assured, “I will happily agree to give you my paraglider. But not for nothing.” He said, glancing off to the distant, now orange glowing structure.

* * *

When they tried the slate on the pedestal of that first conical building they’d found again, those thick bars that made up what truly did turn out to be a door parted, folding inwards after a fairly complex runic circle—as well as most of the structure itself—went from orange to blue. 

They had to secure some form of treasure from inside the “Shrine” as the old man had dubbed it, but as to just what he was talking about, they couldn’t ascertain. A part of them felt that he was being purposefully vague. 

Once inside the Shrine, they felt a familiar stirring in their mind, like someone was making a direct connection to their thoughts. It felt very similar to when they heard  _ her _ . 

When a new voice in their head began to speak, they didn’t even flinch. 

_ “To you who sets foot in this shrine, I am Oman Au. In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I offer this trial.” _

Only the word “Hylia” made the slightest impression on them, but they really only understood the first half of that statement, and they didn’t bother wasting time to question the rest. 

They caught sight of another pedestal, much like the one they’d seen on the tower only an hour prior. It seemed to have the same sort of setup, with what they recalled being a “Guidance Stone” distilling information as the slate’s monotone and mechanical voice had narrated, whatever that meant. The first time a bright blue drop of liquid data came in contact with the screen, the Slate had evidently regained some function, which in hindsight was likely incredibly damaged before it came into their possession, as the map and a litany of displays that had to do with things like time and weather were partially restored. They wondered just what the new features the Guidance Stone was going to give them, seeing how the display of seemingly random words that flowed down the data crystal like water would a stalagmite didn’t indicate anything specific. 

It turned out to be some sort of application called “Magnesis” which allowed them to—within a limited but fairly large range—lift and move around objects of predominantly metal composition. It certainly proved their assumption that these strange shrines and related structures weren’t metal, as when they looked through the slate while it was active, the only thing they could interact with was the large, rectangular metal plates on the floor—things they never could have hoped to move with just their strength alone. 

The menu option to select the rune became listed in on the empty displays they’d noted prior, occupying one of the five slots available. The guidance stone saw fit to rename the entire tab itself, designating the page as “Runes” where it previously had no header. Curiously, when they scrolled to the other two tabs, the one listed as “data damaged,” they found them to be in the same state of disrepair as before. Evidently, neither the guidance stone in the shrine, nor the one back on the Tower had managed to fix them. They quickly shrugged off the observation, and resumed their progress through the Shrine. 

The rest of the rest of the “trial” was easy, more or less speaking to the fact that it was basically an introductory course to using their new rune. At some point, they saw what looked to be something akin to one of those terrible machines, with the bright blue lens that followed relentlessly and never left their form. Though it unnerved them some, it didn’t evoke any sort of visceral reaction—likely on account of the fact that it was small, was lit with a bright orange from within, and was present in what they considered to be a relatively stable—dare they say safe—environment. It just didn’t feel wrong, unlike the others that gave off a strongly malign aura. 

When they crushed it with a metal box, they were surprised to see that It dropped things they could store in the slate, but they collected them all the same. When their eyes caught a glimpse of their inventory, they noticed that the amount of ancient parts they had was almost double what they remember it originally being. They knew that the slate had a habit of picking up things within a meter’s radius of themself, but they distinctly remember avoiding all of those hostile machines—seemingly inactive be  _ damned _ —ever since their first encounter with one that turned out to be not-so-inert. They hadn’t even wanted to pay attention to the ancient parts categories ever since then, and the fact that they’d only noticed now was concerning. It made it harder to pin down just when they’d acquired so much supplies, let alone _ how _ .

It was one new thing to add to the quickly growing list of things they didn’t want to question, so they brushed it off and moved on with the Shrine. 

Finding a Traveler’s Bow in a metal chest, they’d promptly assumed that the weapon was what they’d been sent in to retrieve—which if the case, was incredibly lame—until they approached the end of the trial. Opening a pair of metal doors, they immediately paled at the sight of what looked to be a person, but horrifically desiccated and frail looking. They sat cross-legged on a podium encased in some sort of blue field of energy, in an upright position with arms held up before their chest in a reverent manner, while their hands formed a triangle. They had dark, but heavily saturated and wrinkled skin, as well as long, white hair that was partially done in some sort of simple yet elegant up-do. They wore only pants, polished wooden jewelry, and what looked to be a conical straw hat against their back. Most bizarrely, they bore a forehead tattoo of the same symbol on the energy field that glowed when they approached—the same as the symbol on the slate. The eye. 

The pose, the scarce attire, the iconography—all of it reminded them of a devout follower of some faith. A monk.

Tentatively, they stepped forward, up to a plate (that they noted was engraved with the word “GOAL” oddly enough) and paused, at a loss for what to do. They reached out to touch the energy field to inspect it—maybe find some way to breach it, if that was what they were supposed to do—but quickly retracted their hand when it rippled at their touch. They heard a faint hum, seeing the field grew just a little bit brighter—and burst, shattering into a bright spectacle of strings of light that lingered only for a few moments after they were severed. 

They had little time to recuperate from the scene, before things got just a little weirder. 

_ “You have proven to possess the resolve of a true hero” _

It was the same voice they’d heard upon entering the shrine. The voice of this monk, who’s words resounded in their mind without having to speak.

_ “I am Oman Au, the creator of this trial” _

* * *

They absently rubbed at their chest, where the orb had been subsumed, as they rode back up the lift. They weren’t exactly sure as to what it was, or why this “gift” was particularly useful, and the monk didn’t seem to see or hear them when they tried to sign and speak—to ask what was happening. 

_ “With your arrival, my duty is now fulfilled.” _

They clenched a fistful of the Doublet over their chest tightly, trying not to think of the hauntingly beautiful sight that was the dissipation of the Monk.

_ “May the Goddess smile upon you.” _

* * *

Apparently, no, the old man didn’t want the bow. It was the Spirit Orb he was after. How he knew about it, they had no idea, and frankly they didn’t buy his answer of “clairvoyance.” He seemed to figure as much when their face plainly conveyed their overt skepticism. 

“Hah, well...” His eyes held a strange glint In them, as he stared them down. “As one gets older, it can become more difficult to see what is right before one’s own eyes...” he attempted to explain, “However, that which was once hidden from view can often be crystal clear.” 

They stared him down right back, skepticism unabating. 

“-But perhaps that is not true for everyone!” he quipped, laughing some at his own joke while they stared on, unimpressed. 

His enthusiastic facade dropped like a hat, as his face shifted into a solemn one, not unlike the face he gave them as they talked across a fire the night before. It was almost harrowing to behold. He looked into their eyes, and they struggled not to avert their gaze from the intensity of his. 

“The appearance of those towers, and the awakening of this shrine...” his hands shifted on his staff, and his eyes darted down to their hips. 

“It is all connected to that Sheikah Slate you carry on your hip there”

* * *

_ Sheikah.  _

_ The name of the people who made the Shrines.  _

_ Who made the Towers. _

_ Who made the Slate.  _

_ Who bore the eye. _

_ Sheikah. The name of an ancient and advanced race that left behind a presumptuous legacy, or so we had once been told, a long time ago.  _

Those words of his were all that occupied their mind as they ran around the Great Plateau, repeating over and over as they absently set about completing the old man’s further tasks.

It took them three days to obtain the other Spirit Orbs the old man had wanted them to collect in addition to the first one. Each shrine gave them a new rune, presented a different trial meant to test said runes, and each Shrine held a Monk who would extract the final portion of their life force from their mummified body, and gift it to the Hylian before bidding them farewell and disappearing. 

They sat atop the dark, snowy mountain, just on the end of the most unfortunately located Shrine’s platform, fingers tracing the runic symbols of the circular pad—ones that apparently received the end of a teleportation spell the Slate could cast, if the old man were to be believed in his here-say, that was. They had yet to test the feature, and were a bit reluctant to do so without good cause, seeing how walking suited them just fine. 

Their thoughts wandered to the old man. How strange it was that he knew so much about the most obscure of things, like the Slate of the Sheikah. The things he did and said were never wrong, factually or otherwise, but still—something about him didn’t seem right. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust him. He’d been nothing but hospitable to them, and never once had anything he’d said led them astray, even if his vague advice and instructions had confused them. Everything on the Plateau confused them. They couldn’t hold it against him for being so odd and aloof, because for all they knew, they were the same to him. 

Still. Something about him was...off. Not exactly disingenuous, but not direct either. He wasn’t threatening, but they were starting to feel like they didn’t really like him all that much. They weren’t sure if they ever liked him from the moment they woke up. 

As they continued to think, the rising morning sun peeked over the distant horizon line and through the pink, clouded sky in an incredible shade of gold, dusting over the snow at their boots and making it glitter around them in a soft sandy sort of shade. They were captivated by the sight. 

Maybe the cold wasn’t so bad after all. They did manage to find a LOT of great weapons in the snowy range—like a wonderfully sturdy Knight’s Claymore—and the view was a nice plus. 

As if on cue, the old man stepped out from behind the shrine. They paid little mind to the crunch of his shoes in the snow, and said nothing when he joined them in silence to watch the sunrise. 

“Magnificent...” he spoke after a few minutes of nothing but the cold wind pounding their ears, when the sun had fully risen and no longer touched the horizon. “this is...” he characteristically trailed off.

They looked up at him, only to see him staring at the golden sun shining down over everything with a glassy-eyed, unfixed gaze. He looked vulnerable. He looked lost.

He looked just like how they felt. 

And then he looked down at them. 

“This is something I’ll never forget.” he said, gracing them with the sincerest—and saddest—smile. But soon enough, he began to laugh that hollow laugh of his, with nothing to prompt it. They understood that whatever mask he usually wore, he had just put back on. 

“Truly, extraordinary.” he remarked in a tone caught between mild and emphatic. “That means... it’s finally time.” 

They looked at him curiously. 

“Ahnu.” He stated, eyes hardening. 

They flinched at the word. The name. They immediately stood up straight and attentive—waiting for him to do something. Say something. To tell them what to do. 

“It is finally time for me to tell you everything. But first...”

* * *

As they materialized in the crypt, they were suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion, on top of the nausea that came with being converted into light and thrown across a great distance. Landing on their hands and knees after not quite orienting themself correctly, they needed a minute to catch their breath and inspect themself. 

Sure enough, they found their body undamaged and all their equipment present and accounted for, which was at least reassuring. Still, the teleporting was  _ very  _ unpleasant. 

As soon as the old man directed them-or rather, indirectly directed them-towards the grand Temple, and promptly  _ vanished into thin air _ , they had yanked their slate off of their hip and looked for the closest point of potential travel via teleportation, deciding that this was as good and necessary a time as any for them to test the ability. 

They ended up hurriedly selecting the “Shrine of Resurrection” paying little mind to the name as their body came apart in a flash of blue,  _ literally  _ consuming light. 

Now, they found themself in the tomb they had first awoken in. 

Pushing aside the clenching of their chest-partially leftover convulsions from the unfortunate experience that was teleporting, but mostly something else that they didn’t want to waste time thinking about considering the more pressing matters at hand—they made a mad-dash for the exit of the cave. They pointedly did not turn to look back in the depths of the Shrine, no matter how much they felt like they needed to. 

Without pausing to rest, they ran down the side of the mountain, across the adjacent field past a few Bokoblins they didn’t bother to raise their pitchfork against, and through the Temple ground, up several flights of stairs, only to find themselves at the doorway of the sanctuary only an hour after they’d last seen the old man. 

Panting harshly and erratically, they forced themself to pass the threshold, finding it much more taxing to do so than before. Again, their eyes were drawn to the massive, eye-catching Statue. It looked just as stunning in the scarce morning light peeking through clouds as it did in the setting sun.

As they approached it, the air around the effigy seemed to shimmer. They looked up into the serene face of the sculpture, and felt an impulse to bring their own hands together in imitation of the being depicted before them. 

For a moment, they didn’t think about the old man and his paraglider, of the soft voice and the monstrosity at the castle, and of all the doubts that began to form in their frantic, forgetful mind. 

For a moment, all they did was lower their head, close their eyes, clasp their hands, and empty their mind. 

Distantly, they felt something stir in the deepest recesses of their mind and soul, as if something had reached inside their head to press at the back of their mind—just like when they heard  _ her  _ voice. 

They tensed in apprehension, waiting for yet another voice that would offer unwarranted guidance. But, opening their eyes and looking back up at the soothing face of the statue in anticipation, they felt strangely mollified by the sight, and they felt all the rigidity of their strained muscles give way to slack. 

Only when they had accepted the comfort of the presence, did it make itself truly known.

_ “You who have conquered the Shrines and claimed their Spirit orbs.” _

The voice was eerily similar to  _ her _ . It carried on the same reverberant frequency that shook their skull, but this voice was clear and calm. It sounded like a young woman, but felt ancient all the same. 

_ “I can offer you great power..” _

They felt something—many something’s—stirring in their chest, as if they were slowly being pulled to the surface from behind a wall of ribs and flesh. 

_ “It appears you have claimed four Spirit Orbs.” _

Souls that danced with their own to the beat of their heart began to sing within the cage of bone, eagerly awaiting the moment that they would finally be laid to rest, and reunited with their Goddess.

_ “In exchange for four Spirit Orbs, I will amplify your being.” _

They slowly, carefully separated their previously interlaced fingers, instead letting one hand move to absently grip the neck of the Doublet, and for the other to feel at their collar. For a moment, they traced the clavicle, their fingers brushing over a patch of raised skin that was sensitive and soft, not firm like the rest of their dermis. They hadn’t noticed just how marred their body was until now—likely by virtue of willful ignorance. 

The skin under their doublet began to itch. 

_ “So tell me what it is that you desire.” _

They clenched their jaw.

“I don’t—“ they tried to quickly respond, “-don’t understand what you—“ they struggled to say. It wasn’t that the words couldn’t come, like they sometimes felt when they had talked to the old man, but that they wouldn’t. They didn’t dare try to move their hands away from their chest to sign, feeling like if they did,  _ something  _ would burst out of it. They looked off to the side, out through a broken window of the Temple, at the bedim, overcast sky that looked just as ready to shed water as they did. 

Trembling, they looked back up to the statue. The statue of the Goddess, they now understood. 

Hylia. 

“I just want-“

They didn’t know. They didn’t know what they wanted. They didn’t know what was happening, or why they so desperately longed to find out, but despised the notion all the same. Why they didn’t want to even think about  _ her _ , or look at those machines, or have to look into the eyes of an old man who’s riddle-some quietude belied an air of a deep, dark despondency— _ just like them. _

They didn’t know why they felt this way. They wished they did.

“-to understand.” they continued. 

They know though, that they didn’t have it in themself to look for answers. They wished they had the strength to do that—

And so, to a degree, the Goddess gave them that strength. Just enough to continue on—to keep going

_ “I shall grant you the power you seek.” _

_ The power you need. _

The remnants of life force that they were gifted prior broke through the dam that was their breast, dancing around their body now, before dispersing in all directions, out of sight. What took their place in the numb cavity of their empty chest was an invigorating flow of pure energy. 

The onrush of vitality was unexpected, and made them take a step back. They looked down at their hands, bringing them away from where they cradled their chest, and flexed their fingers experimentally. Something about them felt just a little bit different. A little bit sturdier. 

The fatigue that came with the endeavor of running to the Temple had disappeared, and the mental exertion that made them tremble in the shadow of the graven image of the Goddess had lessened, if ever so slightly. 

_ “Go,” _

The voice regained their attention, and they looked back up to the statue with so many questions that they knew it wouldn’t answer.

_ “-and bring peace to Hyrule. _ ”

They stepped back fully, away from the monument but still facing it, wishing it had anything else to say. They had little time to register the Statue’s command, before another, more tangible voice picked up where it left off.

“The blessing of the Goddess has made you that much more resilient, I see” the voice of the old man called out. 

They turned around, not particularly alarmed at his sudden intrusion of their thoughts, very much so used to it by now. What did come as a surprise, was that he wasn’t behind them, like he had usually turned up, but  _ above  _ them. Craning their neck up to see the silhouette of his form against the grey sky, they saw that he was looking down at them from the gaping hole of the Temple ceiling. He smiled down at them, just like the Goddess statue. 

“Here I am...” he redundantly remarked, turning away from them. “Get up here—quickly!” he called, walking away from the hole, towards what they could only assume to be the Temple spire.

* * *

Having taken the ladder up (actually remembering that it existed after their last blunder in climbing the Temple), they made their way across the roof with haste. They briefly realized they no longer had the Spirit Orbs necessary for them to make the trade for the paraglider, but pushed that thought aside when they climbed up to the post on top of the Temple and caught sight of the old man watching them—that familiarly peculiar light in his eyes. 

They had a feeling that the trade, this game, the pretense for the whole charade—that none of it mattered anymore.

As they stood up straight, they looked towards him, expectant and waiting for something a part of them knew no amount of strength given to them by a Goddess would ever prepare them for. 

The old man looked at them, almost right through them as he had a prominent habit of doing, and saw that they were as determined to face him as they were uncertain to listen. What a vexing contradiction. He laughed at the predicament. 

“Well done there, young one!” he exclaimed, as what seemed to be the absolute last of his enthusiasm drained out of his now pensive face. “Now then...” He shifted his staff to a single hand, letting the other fall limply to his side. 

“The time has come—“ he continued, letting go of his staff, allowing it to fall to the ground, where it vanished in a bout of soft blue flames and bright specks, just like he did on the mountain. “-to show you who I truly am.” He began to glow. They tensed at the sight. 

“I was King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule.” he stated. His body was becoming enshrouded in a faint light, the same color of the flames that absorbed his staff. Not as intense as that of the Sheikah technology, but teal and subdued and almost organic in nature—the exact opposite of the trademark constructions that bore the symbol of the eye. 

“I was...” The flames began to manifest at his feet, licking his boots, which almost seemed to be floating. “—the last leader of Hyrule.” The fire traveled up his body.

“A kingdom which no longer exists.”

His body was consumed by light.

And, before them, stood a man they did not want to remember. 

* * *

They glared through him numbly, almost uncomprehending, as he spoke words they hadn’t expected to dread so much. 

“I think you are now ready.”

_ ‘No—‘ _ they thought

“Ready to hear what happened—“

_ ‘I’m not—‘ _

“—almost 100 years ago.”

_ ‘I don’t want—‘ _

But they couldn’t finish the thought. They came here for a reason. This reason. They  _ did  _ want to know, even if they didn’t like it. Even if it hurt. Even if they  _ hated  _ it, and everything to do with it.

Their fingers twitched. They resisted the urge to reach for the pitchfork on their back. They bit back the vile, vicious seething that threatened to breach their impassive face as they looked at the back of the deceased King.

Rhoam had since turned away, to face the Castle that bore the burden of a demon yet to be born. They too looked upon the demented kingdom, catching yet another view of the beast’s ugly spirit manifesting in protest of it’s containment, before it began to fizzle out and come crashing back into the Castle like a tidal wave of inky aura.

“Malice” is what the King would call it. 

* * *

Zelda. That was her name. 

Being no longer of the physical realm, the King has no need for tears anymore. There was no sensation of relief that came with the release, and no alleviation for the sorrow that haunted his soul. He’d existed in this state long enough to know that there was no end to the misery that persisted long after his death, and he’d long since made peace with it. Even now, as he said his dearest daughter’s name, his eyes remained pools that he could not shed. 

The king turned away to the castle, only to be met with an expressionless face he knew all too well. He almost hadn’t recognized them when they first emerged from the Shrine of Resurrection. He had expected a silent, battle-hardened warrior, ready and eager to do what must be done—only to be met with a confused, vocally forthcoming, doe-eyed child that merely looked like the hero. 

When he saw them now, he saw that they looked as if they were both. Someone so disoriented and overwhelmed that they  _ needed  _ to be detached, lest they let their mind unravel and fall apart entirely. Thought, he supposed that had always been the case in their old life. Back then, they had the means to adjust to it, but now, they no longer had the luxury of time to heal any wounds, aside from the physical. 

“Even now, as she works to restrain Ganon from within Hyrule Castle, she calls out for your help.” He stated, gravely. “However, my daughter’s power will soon be exhausted.”

_ “Ahnu” _

“Once that happens, Ganon will freely regenerate himself and nothing will stop him from consuming our lands.”

_ “You are our final hope.” _

“Considering that I could not save my own kingdom, I have no right to ask this of you, Ahnu.” He spoke, looking to the ground at their feet. 

For a moment, the shame that came with just saying  _ their  _ name overwhelmed him, and his face contorted into a rather ugly, pitiful look. He clenched his fist. 

“But I am powerless here.” he finished the thought, closing his eyes briefly, before forcing his spectral gaze back towards the hero who bore an uncannily dispassionate expression. 

They looked on at him in absolute apathy now, their concern long having fizzled away into nothingness, and he selfishly was grateful for it. He didn’t know if he had it in him to beg someone who looked like a child to mend his mistakes.  _ Not again. _

“Please...” he began, his ghostly form sinking to the knees under the weight of their despondent scrutiny, looking up at them. “You must save her...my daughter.”

_ “Ahnu” _

“And do whatever it takes to annihilate Ganon.”

_ “The fate of Hyrule rests with you!”  _

* * *

As soon as the king had vanished into the gloomy mid-morning sky, the only Hylian on the Great Plateau had fallen to their knees just as rain had begun to fall upon the Temple. 

They grabbed their aching head and clenched their eyes shut, grabbing fistfuls of dark, shoulder-length hair that they began to erratically tug on. Their throat burned and their chest felt so tight that they struggled to breathe, an oncoming bout of hyperventilation doing nothing to alleviate what they were sure was them suffocating. They bent forward over their knees and began to slightly rock themselves back and forth, forehead tapping the ground-sometimes with force-while heaving. They continued on like this until the rain outside was coming in at full force.

Eventually, they began to slow down the rocking and hair pulling, as they began to breathe deeply. Letting their hands slide from their bruised scalp to the ground in loose fists, they looked with bloodshot eyes at the paraglider that remained where The King had once stood. They let out a loud, warbling wail as they doubled back over.

All these things they know knew did nothing but torture them in their obscurity. Fact and history found themselves completely detached from the reality that was their lack of memory. The responsibility of a Kingdom that they couldn’t even hope to recall crushed their fragile, practically newborn mind. It hurt so badly—they  _ hated  _ how much it  _ hurt _ .

And for a moment, they hated the world that they woke up to. 

* * *

They did get up from on their knees only minutes later, body suddenly moving with all the finesse and grace of someone expected to be a warrior. They grabbed the paraglider, and without bothering to check it, or even pay any mind to the downpour that darkened the sky and concealed all features of the land before them, they ran out of the side on the Temple’s roost, and disappeared into the rain.

* * *

The Lynel huffed at the rain. He never did like to get wet, and now he was trotting aimlessly through the rainstorm that he could hardly see a couple of meters through in any direction. 

The rain made it hard to see, hard to hear, and almost impossible to smell in. All of these were senses that the Lynel depended on to remain vigilant, so while the man-horse was usually not so vulnerable as to be snuck up on, it made sense that he hadn’t seen the pitchfork that was driven into his eyes.

Wailing in pain, the Lynel grasped at the handle of the accursed tool and yanked it out, tossing it aside. It had been driven in DEEP, with too much force to have been thrown, and sure enough, once the Lynel had wrestled back some awareness through the pain, he began haphazardly bucking and kicking and flailing his arms—because there was something that was scurrying around on his back. 

He could feel that he’d successfully kicked off whatever it was that was on him. He caught just the barest, most diluted whiff of what he identified as the smell of a Hylian, the likes of which he could only determine—despite the rain—on account of the foe’s brief proximity. When he turned to face the being he had kicked away, he was faced with the grim realization that his eyes were all but useless, both having been deeply punctured. He lamented his incapacitated state with a booming roar that could match thunder. 

He charged blindly towards where he thought he could just barely make out footsteps in the deafening downpour, but found himself never making contact with any sort of creature, instead ploughing into a tree on his left side, which both shattered the the truck of the unfortunate sycamore as well as threw him off his hooves. Skidding to a far off stop, raking deep rivulets of thrown earth through the muddy ground, the Lynel struggled to get up, hooves slipping in the silt. As he tried to regain his footing, he felt that dreadfully familiar scuttling on his side, as his assistant had yet again boarded his back, just as he managed to stand back up.

He charged forward again, hoping the speed would throw his foe, all to no avail. He ran and shook in all directions whilst trying to grab the attacker with his hands, but that too had seemed fruitless, as his foe kept moving around, slashing at whatever hand came near them with something sharp. He felt a harsh yank on his mane that cranked his head far to the right, where he made the rest of his body turn as he sprinted in order to try and avoid crashing into the ground.

Unfortunately, he instead ended up crashing head first into a mound of boulders the size of his body. 

The boulder he’d slammed his face into cracked, but otherwise didn’t give, and the Lynel was stopped in his tracks, sliding down the face of the tremendous rock as he fell off to the side, nearly unconscious and only vaguely aware that one of his horns had broken off following the impact. 

He was aware enough to feel the Hylian that crashed to the ground with him-evidently in far better straits-loop something around to the front of him. He felt a sharp, telltale pressure against his neck—where something was attempting to puncture him, he was sure. 

He closed his useless eyes, having kept them wide open in rage for the duration of the fight despite the lack of utility there-in. He inhaled deeply through his nose, getting a closer, clearer smell of the Hylian that hadn’t fought him fairly, wanting to remember their scent for when he came back.

And he would come back. Just like they all did. 

He relaxed into the Hylian’s hold, as he felt the bite of cold metal meet his neck through his mane. And then he felt nothing. 

* * *

The Sheikah Slate quickly digitized all the Lynel’s gear after the monster had dissipated. They paid no attention to it. 

They pulled the Slate off of their hip, and vacantly selected the icon for the Tower of the Great Plateau, quickly disappearing in the bright, blue light. 

* * *

_ Darkness. Dragging. Shrieking and crying.  _

_ They found themself in the void yet again, that thing from before ever so slightly closer to them as it ripped it’s own flesh asunder on every bit of the blackness that pursued it, as if it were crawling through an invisible bush of thorns instead of free floating deep, deep underwater like they were. It left a trail of purple and red viscera in it’s wake that seemed to curl and twist in the air, and they wanted to scream at it to stop— _ **_please stop, you’re killing yourself!_ ** _ —but that darkness seemed to fill their already compressed lungs, and all that came out was a whimper.  _

_ That seemed to be enough though, because it  _ **_did_ ** _ stop, and it turned to face them fully—so much more of it on display, like the fog that shrouded it had been separated by the wind of their pathetic whine into two walls—a corridor of nothingness—that only they and it occupied.  _

_ It’s faux-flesh surged and spiraled in on itself like a dark ichor. Blood red tendrils of hair slithered and whipped around what they could see to be a mangled approximation of a face. When it opened its eyes, they were startled to see that they looked normal, like the eyes of any other person. So uncanny on that nightmarish, underdeveloped and fetal-looking face.  _

_ How awful to see the bright yellow eyes of a person plastered on a beast. _

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wild stuff. Next up, they'll be off the Great Plateau!


	3. Chapter 3--Compromise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Off of the Great Plateau. Now What?

They woke up to the sky overhead—specifically to a particularly harsh ray of sunlight that warmed their cheeks but lashed mercilessly at their slow to adjust eyes. They blinked away fresh tears brought on by the brightness of the sun directly above, but couldn’t bring themselves to so much as turn in any direction to face away from the irritating illumination. Instead, they clamped their eyes shut in pointless protest of being awake, and attempted to not think, with little success. 

They especially didn’t want to think about whatever it was they had seen in their dreams.

The noxious combination of adrenaline and nausea that ran through them the day prior—as they lamely judged by the zenith of the sun—had abated, leaving a gaping numbness that was more than welcome given the circumstance. Their mind was still too fuzzy to make sense of anything, and for the time being, they adamantly refused to review their most recent endeavors in any sort of depth whatsoever. Except, they couldn’t exactly do that forever. 

They didn’t quite remember what had happened after their astonishing revelation with the deceased King. They remembered being back on the Tower—the one that rose from the ground four days ago—which they think they could vaguely recall teleporting to, on account of how startling and uncomfortable it was, which made it stand out in their mind. But before that? They didn’t register much else other than the fact that they got the paraglider. They figured they glided off of the Tower to...wherever they were now.

They don’t even know where they are approximately, given that they haven’t obliged reason enough to open their eyes against the onslaught that is the noon sun. They’d either slept an entire day away, or hadn’t slept much at all, and they weren’t sure which was worse. The dull throb in their head signified the latter, but the stiffness of their sprawled body argued the former. The fact that light hit their face at all indicated that they probably weren’t occupying a form of shelter most optimal, and were likely vulnerable in some way. The very thought of their own accessibility to potentially dangerous entities was enough to incite movement. 

Curling their fingers into weak fists, they were suddenly aware of the fact that only a single hand responded to the prompting, which was panic inducing enough to jolt them fully out of their inertia. 

Their eyes shot open as they convulsed violently for a moment, trying to ground themself, only for their face to be met with a brick wall. Stilling almost immediately, they blinked rapidly before their eyes focused. Cracked stone came into view before them, and they studied it vacantly before their eyes traced a fissure down to where it met the ground perpendicularly. It took them a few seconds to realize that they were, in fact, laying on their side. The hand—rather the whole arm—that refused to cooperate was crushed underneath them in what was a rather uncomfortable fashion that they were growing acutely aware of the longer they didn’t try to rectify their unfortunate position. 

Bemoaning their now literal numbness, they slowly and begrudgingly dragged themself relatively upright, with their legs pulled in on one side and their—rapidly regaining circulation—left arm supporting them. Roughly sitting up, they hazard a glance down to their weapons and paraglider that they’d evidently been curled around, as well as something else. Something rather colorful and odd-looking. Picking through the weapons—scanning each briefly in inspection before judging them satisfactory and donning them in their preferred manner—they finally got to the strange and spiked heart shaped thing after re-quilling their formerly scattered arrows. 

Picking it off of the stone beneath them, they examined it closely, their eyes drawn to the bugged-out exaggeration that was the eyes of what they could only assume to be a mask, albeit a _very_ strange one. The eye contact was strangely intent, seeming somehow to be passively malicious, but almost wary in it‘s own right? It was as if it was sizing them up, judging them as—something. It was almost harrowing to look at, and probably would have been borderline intimidating were they not observing the thing in broad daylight with all the comforts that weaponry on hand and readily accessible brought them. 

Speaking of the light, it seemed that while they were caught up in their reverie, a blanket of clouds had swept in and made to bedim the sky. The overcast weather was very welcome, what with their eyes no longer having to strain against the brightness reflecting off of the pale, mossy stone around them. They sat up a bit more properly, crossing their legs, and glanced back down at the mask they held in their hands yet again. It seemed to almost faintly glow against in the now gloomy and shaded air, the aura it gave off undulating in a manner that resembled a gentle but stray throbbing, and for all of a moment they were given the distinct impression that whatever they were holding was  _ alive. _

Had they not been so emotionally drained into near impassivity, they were sure that they would have found the thing they held to be deeply off-putting, but instead it evoked nothing more than a resigned bout of curiosity in their already frayed and still rather groggy mind. They looked around, attempting to discern just where the mask came from, but found only the dilapidated remains of what was once a rather large building, filled with the degraded remnants of what they could only assume to be scant furniture. Given that they didn’t even know where they were, they quickly dismissed the inquisitive pursuit in favor of pulling out their Sheikah Slate. A mere glimpse at the map was enough to confirm that they weren’t on the Great Plateau anymore.

The feverish claws of anxiety gripped their spine and pulled at their stomach. The map was empty beyond the Plateau—desperately in need of an update—and supplied not even an approximation of where they were aside from their proximity to the Plateau they’d become so accustomed to in their oblivious nascent. They stored away their paraglider and made to holster the Slate, before sparing another glance to the mask they’d all but tossed aside in their alarm. Pausing their panic, they studied it one more time, before making to cradle it in one arm, while the other worked briskly with the slate, fiddling with it to open the storage catalog. In an instant, the mask disappeared in a flurry of digitization, registered and stashed away in the slate until further notice. 

* * *

What was a simple exploration and assessment of the meager ruins they awoke in quickly turned into a far more interesting endeavor as soon as they’d found the Korok tucked away under a rock opposite to the corner that they’d occupied while basically comatose. Said Korok delightfully informed them of a Talus—a  _ rare _ one—that nested in the center of the lake next to the decrepit building they both happened to be in. Taking the seed the childling offered and heading off, neglecting to gather any of the rusted weapons scattered about in favor of their already full and superior inventory, they quickly made their way over to the isle in the center of the basin. 

They elected to use Cryonis to cross the water in favor of swimming in what they felt was brisk 50 degree weather. That, however, became a rather redundant effort on their part when a rounded, tentacled creature—much like the octoroks they’d seen on the Great Plateau, but  _ mean _ —with sparse camouflage in the form of marsh grass, spit a rock directly at their head. 

_ “Water Octorok. Emphasis on the rock.” That warm voice joked, laughing her deep laugh. _

Huh. Okay. They sort of thought that they were done with the whole hearing not-real voices in their head thing, but apparently not. 

Swimming the rest of the way to the lake’s center, they dispatched the damned thing with little fanfare more than an arrow, deciding to gather whatever pieces of itself were left behind in the dispersal of its form after they’d dealt with the Talus, which they promptly did with an equal lack of pageantry. 

The reward for their effort was a substantial amount of gems of all different assortments, as well as a single octo-balloon. All of which they assessed and excitedly added to their collection. Time and effort well spent and rewarded in their opinion. They returned to the ruins in good spirits for only a short time before the unfortunate reality of their situation settled in. 

There was the issue of what to do next. Scanning the horizon from the center of the lake, they saw the Plateau—obscuring their view of the mesa they remembered seeing a lot of back when they had to traverse the snowy mountains. Then they turned away from the Plateau, only for the _very_ prominent and proximate castle that practically demanded their attention to come into view. Focusing on it just a bit longer than they would have liked to, the only thing that they could conclude from the sight was that they still weren't going anywhere near it. 

Looking on and away, they saw too much of a land they didn’t recognize. A land so big that they couldn’t even begin to decide what was a part of the horizon and what was obscured by the clouded sky. They turned almost completely around before they faced the sundered mountain. 

If they were honest, they still weren’t quite sure that anything they were doing was real. Trying to think about anything more than what was in front of them was jarring and detached. It was hard enough for them to form any sort of opinion, let alone plan any sort of extenuating operations, based on the context of their presence— _ their purpose _ —in the world beyond what they’d awakened to. 

_ “Follow the road out to Kakariko Village. There you will find the Sheikah elder, Impa. She will tell you more about the path that lies ahead.”  _

That was what the king had said to do. 

The goal was clear, and their next destination, a remote village past the severed mountain, inhabited by people that shared their race with the name of the slate fastened to their hip. A village—with a name that barely stirred something maybe resembling cognizance; something that ever so slightly  _ ached _ —where someone they were supposed to find resided. Someone who would tell them what to do next. 

Despite the clarity of their assigned task, they took no more than a few steps in the direction of the Dueling Peaks before turning back towards the Great Plateau. On little more than a whim, they continued on in the decidedly wrong direction, with no one other than the wind objecting. They ignored it. 

* * *

On their way towards the base of the Great Plateau, They’d ended up stumbling upon a brother and sister duo who’d ran into trouble with Bokoblins whilst rummaging around some ruins. They absently donned the mask they’d found earlier—though they weren’t exactly sure why—and made quick work of the monsters. They were rummaging through the beast’s remains when the sister of the two approached them. 

To say that the siblings were caught off guard by them, more specifically the uncanny as all hells mask they wore, was an understatement, but as soon as the incongruous savior had turned away towards what little those wretched swine had dropped, they caught a glimpse of the back of a distinctly Hylian head, much to their relief. Though the inattention of the vigilante towards the two in favor of the still convulsing Bokoblin guts they were inspecting was...eccentric, the brother and sister, or Mils and Mina as they introduced themselves, were no less thankful. Their hero didn’t speak much—like, at all—nor did they remove their mask when the siblings regarded them personally, which didn’t help with the air of indifference they gave off, but they did manage to sign their thanks in Hylian hand-speak and give a small bow when they were given a fairy tonic in exchange for their saving of the two, so they couldn’t be all that bad. 

Despite the heroics and combat prowess, the masked Hylian certainly looked a little rough for the wear, prompting Mils to recommend the nearest Stable that they themselves had just ventured from for the purposes of their new acquaintance’s recuperation. On a final note of mutual and half unspoken thanks, the two parties had gone their separate ways. 

* * *

They realized that they were more than a little bit perturbed by the sight of people. They felt no ill will towards them—certainly not like the inherent hostility towards the few types of monsters they’d encountered—but they didn’t exactly find themselves comfortable with the strangers, despite the fact that they were harmless and earnestly congenial. Their throat closed up, making their voice come out in little more than an unintelligible whisper, and they found themself somewhat nonplussed by the sudden accolades of thanks they’d received. They were almost embarrassed when they’d signed their thanks in response, and departed soon after they were directed towards a place known as the “Outskirts Stable” with little room for conversation. 

They supposed that there were probably more people to be met there, which wasn’t exactly appealing, but also wasn’t a totally repellant thought. A part of them wanted to see other people, and to become accustomed to talking with them without flustering and flailing behind the cover of a literal mask. That was also perhaps a reason they put it on, and didn’t take it off. Regardless, as the evening stretched into night they made their way down the trail the treasure-hunters pointed them towards, before finding themself in a pass between the base of the Great Plateau and what they thought to be a mountain, which seemed to fork into two paths up ahead of them. That’s when they heard the yelling. 

In the distant dark, they saw another bystander, a single Hylian by the looks of it, fighting off a trio of Stalkoblins, and losing. They wasted no time closing the distance between themself and the group, swiftly cutting down the monsters and helping the fallen man to his feet. Botrick, as he introduced himself, was a grateful, older arrow-smith and night watch for the very stable they were heading towards, and he kindly led them back to said location as well as gave them a couple of salted mushroom rice-balls in thanks. 

“I’m sure you’ll find it rather homely here. The Outskirts Stable is a very popular one, due to it’s relatively central location in Hyrule. We get a lot of unique visitors” Botrick idly conversed as he wrapped the promised food in rice paper on the table inside the Stable they’d arrived at together. His savior sat across from him, slumped in on themself with their arms pulled close to their body in what he could only assume was a nervously reserved fashion. “There’s also the ancient Colosseum Ruins nearby, just on the other side of the Rocky Mountains to the East. Though it’s a rather fell place, teeming with monsters, there are plenty of scavengers that go hunting for weapons near it.” he finished, noting that the strangely masked Hylian seemed to perk up at the mention of the old, war-torn arena, though it was hard to tell since he couldn’t see their face. 

“Ah, how rude of me,” he idly remarked while tying the wrapped rice-balls up in some twine, “I gave you my name, but hardly bothered to ask of yours.” He looked at them expectantly. “Just what might the name of my hero be?”

His polite inquiry prodded at the fire in their mind they had so desperately been trying to smother ever since they raised the tower, and especially since the events back on the roost of the Temple. 

They’d only learned of the desolation of the land at the hand of evil-incarnate four days ago. That same amount of time ago was when they’d learned the name of the person who’d failed to stop it. A name they desperately did  _ not _ want to think about, that they  _ tried _ not to think about—all to no avail

It was only yesterday that they were given the terrible task of becoming the hero that they weren’t almost 100 years ago. 

They didn’t like it, but accepted it all the same. Who would they be otherwise?

‘A-H-N-U’ they spelled in hand-speak after their extended pause. 

“Ahnu, is it?” he asked. 

They nodded.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ahnu.”

He didn’t mind much that his company was a quiet one, or that they wore a rather unusual mask. He’d seen enough unusual things in his time as a watchman to bear most peculiarities with an air of welcoming, so far in that said peculiarities didn’t try to rip off his head. Handing off the rice-balls and bidding his new young friend farewell, he returned to his patrol. 

The older man was refreshingly neutral in his receiving of Ahnu, which made them a little less nervous around the people in the Stable he’d led them back to. Ahnu covertly stored away the food they’d been gifted into the Sheikah Slate, before departing themself to observe the colosseum Botrick had mentioned in passing. It was a grand thing from the looks of it, and were they not so exhausted from travel, Ahnu likely would have made their way to it right then. They wisely decided against it for the time being, electing to put off the exploration for a later time, and headed back to the Stable after a bit of foraging. They were particularly delighted by the Aromanth and Hearty Radish they’d found.

Coming back to the Stable, Ahnu, in an embarrassing inquiry with the Stable Master, learned that they in fact did not have any money whatsoever in order to occupy one of the beds. Trading some amber and a single Bladed Rhino Beetle for a fair amount of rupees with an excited merchant by the name of Beedle, Ahnu quickly paid for a bed and signed a profuse set of apologies, before heading to sleep in their rented cot.

* * *

Ahnu woke up early—far earlier than anyone else—probably on account of how much they’d slept the previous day. They endeavored to head off before anyone could talk to them about literally anything, wanting desperately to avoid any sort of awkward incidents like the night prior. Despite this, the strange beetle enthusiast and merchant from the night before was awake even before them—that is, if he ever did go to sleep—and in nothing short of an embarrassing interaction that was the exact kind of thing Ahnu wanted to avoid, they did manage to purchase a fairly large waterskin off of the man before heading out. 

Climbing up the incline of a gradual mountain that the Stable rested at the base of, Ahnu made their way to a shrine that they’d seen the night before, but elected to ignore in their exhaustion. It was...simple, to say the least. Just a puzzle they had to solve. The Monk within said little different than those prior, before they too shed their physical form. Still, Ahnu said nothing as they watched them dissipate, and made their way out of the eerily quiet shrine as soon as the monk had vanished. 

After Ahnu left the shrine, they hiked to a tree at the top of the mountain, where they’d found yet another Korok and something rather malicious that threw balls of fire at them. 

_ “A Wizzrobe” _ —that deeper voice supplied. 

It didn’t take more than a few arrows to the head and a blade between the eyes to finish it off, though the thing did manage to conjure up a meteor storm that followed Ahnu for the better part of 10 minutes, even after it had been slayed. They made a mental note to steer clear of the malevolent wizards in the future whenever possible. 

Looking down from the mountain, Ahnu had an extensive view of the alternative route in the forked path they observed last night before they encountered Botrick. If they recalled correctly, he referred to the trail of tall isles connected by a series of bridges the “Digdogg Suspension Bridges.“ Without so much as a second thought, Ahnu jumped from the top of the mountain and pulled out their paraglider, content with following along the path of bridges from the sky for a near half-hour—time that they spent doing little more than finally inspecting the very contraption they hung from. 

Despite its seeming integrity, it did posses some features Ahnu considered a tad superfluous at face value. It gave off the impression of a curved trapezoid when viewed from the top—or in Ahnu’s case, the bottom—what with the parallel poles being concave like a wooded bow not quite at rest, put not pulled taunt either. Realistically, the cloth of the glider didn’t actually perform a role analogous to the bowstring, not being pulled tight to keep the structure in check, as the wooden elements of the contraption looked to be deliberately carved into their shape, and polished to boot. 

The parts of the frame that served as the leading edge and the tailing edge of the glider were connected by three support spokes that fit neatly into carved divots, secured either by some sort of adhesive or by the means of pressure, which was imposed by being securely connected via blue silk cords to the bowed poles meant to distribute weight evenly. Ordinarily, these would be the handholds on a paraglider, and they would be, had they not been occupied by the curiosity Ahnu was mulling over. 

Instead of being where they were meant to put their hands, their paraglider had another staff of wood inserted above and attached to the curved handles, also held in place by tight silk cords. Instead, there was leather looped on either side of the oddly placed staff, serving as the actual grips of the paraglider. They weren’t sure what the strange bar was for, as it clearly didn’t provide any sort of additional support like the spokes did, and it certainly wasn’t any sort of crossbar considering the model of their glider. 

All too soon though, Ahnu had shoved aside (and promptly forgotten) their observations about the paraglider, something else catching their eye. 

Ahnu was nearing what looked to be the largest of the isles when they noticed that a giant, portly creature occupied it’s center. The closer they got, the more details they could make out about the hulking thing. For starters, it was evidently asleep—if it’s single closed eye and blaring snore were anything to go by. This creature—this  _ “Hinox” _ —had no armor aside from a paltry metal leg guard, but most strikingly, it wore what appeared to be a necklace of assorted weapons—one of which was an especially attractive looking saber of sorts, covered in a very decorated sheath. 

Landing on the snoring beast's stomach, Ahnu quickly discarded the Meteor Rod they’d recently acquired in favor of the gorgeously crafted blade. They’d planned on using it to slit the large monster’s throat, but paused for a moment too long when they’d caught sight of the engravings. It wasn’t written in the same Hylian vernacular as that they’d read in back on the Great Plateau, or in that of the Sheikah dialect they were familiar with on the Slate, yet they understood it all the same. 

_ "A fine blade." came that somber, cool voice of hers, perhaps a bit softer than usual—fond, even. Her strangely gloved hand, layered and fingerless with wrapping that ran up the forearm to secure a guard in place, glided up the flat pane of the engraved metal. The golden bangle on her wrist clicked gently against it as her fingers stopped at the words 'tropical flower'. "Take care of it." _

To hear the voice they'd only know thus far as a guide for how to assail potential enemies the most effectively, comment on something so comparatively mundane, was strange to them. 

When they looked again, Ahnu briefly noticed that the phrase of the scimitar in their hand actually read “desert flower”—before suddenly being whacked off the cyclops’ belly. 

Alarmed by the sudden and supposed awareness of the monster they thought to be sound asleep, Ahnu quickly recuperated from the blow and regained their footing on the ground they were knocked to, knees absorbing the shock of the fall as they swiftly assumed a defensive stance. Ahnu absently registered that this would be the first time they’d be trading blows with an enemy that they hadn’t taken unaware, before they realized that the Hinox was actually still asleep. Evidently, it’d passively knocked them off of itself when it moved to scratch itself around the neck where Ahnu was messing with it’s weapon collection. 

They reconsidered the option of killing it in it’s sleep, but dismissed the thought on account of the fact that they didn’t see much of a point in expending the effort necessary to kill such a large thing that wasn’t directly antagonizing them at the moment, instead choosing to quietly walk away. They tried not to touch on the hypocrisy of their mercy as they stored away their newly acquired Scimitar in the Slate, where it was catalogued next to the Savage Lynel Crusher they ignored their possession of. 

* * *

Directly beneath the isles of the Digdogg Bridges, they’d found a shrine by pure coincidence while messing around with the Cryonis function of the slate. Camping outside of it for the night, they figured that they might as well handle whatever puzzle the shrine held before they slept, still somewhat restless from how little they’d done in the day now passed—only to find upon triggering the shrine, it wasn’t the puzzle they’d expected awaiting them.

This different type of shrine held some sort of combative trial, a “minor test of strength” as the presiding monk supplied. Though facing the adjusted Guardian Scout was neither difficult nor remarkable, it was when they came face to impassive face with the aforementioned overseer that they heard a seemingly crucial variation in their blessing—

_ “Your triumph over the test of strength subverts a prophecy of ruin—“  _

_ ‘But it wasn’t hard.’ _ Ahnu thought. Their chest felt tight. They looked away, down to their feet. 

_ “From the ashes of Hyrule, a hero rises.” _

The Monk concluded its statement, endowing Ahnu with what was left of their life force. 

_ ‘But that isn’t—I’m not—I—’ _ They clasped the handle of the slate in one hand, and clutched the collar of their doublet in the other—almost defensively. 

“I don’t think—“ Ahnu tried to say, but it came out in little more than a hoarse croak of their rapidly constricting throat.

_ “May the Goddess smile upon you.” _

“I’m not—not the one you...” They couldn’t bring themself to finish the sentence. Not even to the empty pedestal the Monk had once occupied. 

* * *

They left the shrine, and chose to sleep outside and away from it, on the rocks near the lapping lake water. 

* * *

Ahnu was back on top of the snowy mountain of the Plateau, trying to use the vantage of its height to ascertain the location of nearby Shrines. 

They had only woken up hours ago, and decided that they didn’t feel like swimming or Cryonis-hopping out of the large lake beneath the Digdogg Bridges. They opted to give teleportation another shot, only to discover that unfortunately, the process was still  _ very  _ draining—though not as bad as it was the very first time they had done so. They figured that it would take some getting used to. As they rested atop the mountain and trembled against the cold, they scanned the East horizon with the scope on their Sheikah Slate—pointedly In the opposite direction of the Castle. 

Though they didn’t really want to come back to the Plateau, this was the most readily accessible, high altitude location that wasn’t the Tower, and they  _ really  _ didn’t want to go back to that. They caught sight of that floating thing they recall seeing the day after they woke up in the corner of their eye, before choosing to focus on the barren East lands instead. They could just make out a distant shrine in the Mesa that they had mostly ignored up until now, and so they pulled their paraglider out of the Slate and set off. 

As they drifted, the questions Ahnu subconsciously directed inwards were becoming harder to evade, as they pressed with a meddling insistence that was starting to give them a headache. They still didn’t want to think about everything that was associated with the Sheikah and the Monk’s, or Hylia and their greater destiny, yet they began to fixate on seeking out the Shrines all the same. 

They supposed that this was a suitable compromise. They would seek out Impa later—at  _ some  _ point—but for now they could follow the more covert path laid out for them. If they really were supposed to be the hero foretold, which they still deeply resented the very notion of, then the Shrines were made specifically for their use, limited only to the access of someone who possessed the Sheikah Slate. As much as they wanted to protest that fact—they were that someone. 

If the Shrines really were meant for them, which it seems every Monk they’ve encountered thus far has confirmed to some degree, then there was nothing wrong with what they were doing. This was something they could choose to do all on their own. These were things Ahnu needed to tell themself—over and over if need be—until it stuck.

With a settled mind and a thoroughly ignored conscience, they decided to prioritize the search for Shrines and the acquisition of Spirit Orbs, just as they touched down on the platform of yet another another.

* * *

They’d spent a couple of days messing around in the Mesa, not finding much else besides some interesting fungi, insects, and a bit of treasure, as well as encountering a new type of enemy that looked to be a large, lanky and stretched out version of a Bokoblin—a  _ Moblin _ . 

They had just successfully pushed every Bokoblin off of a large construction with multiple levels of wooden platforms. They presumed it to be some sort of fort like camp, and had briefly considered just burning it to the ground from the base up, but decided against it in favor of taking out each of them individually so as to not burn their supplies along with them. 

The fort was in sight of the Digdogg Suspension Bridges, so Ahnu was planning on making their way back to the Outskirts Stable. It was only evening, and if they hurried, they could make it there by early morning and rest up. A part of them also wanted to pursue the Hinox that they’d spared a while back. 

Ahnu had stopped to inspect some Zapshrooms when they heard the distant, annoying squealing of a delighted Bokoblin, only to look up and discover that the Bokoblin was becoming less distant, very quickly. It rode up to them on a horse, starting to circle them as two more horse-mounted Bokoblins responded to the first one’s evident alert and joined in on flanking Ahnu. All of the monsters had arrows aimed directly at their head. 

They managed to dodge the first two by a few meters, but evidently those were meant to corral them in the direction of the third arrow, which just barely nicked their cheek as they dodged. 

_ “Focus. You’re better than this.” said that smooth, ever-steady voice, as the owner brought her hand up to their head, tapping their forehead twice with two fingers in light chastise.  _

Ahnu swatted the air where the hand would have been.

Well. That is a rather irritating thing for them to have to hear and generally deal with at a most inconvenient time. 

They whipped out a bomb from the rune of the Slate, throwing it just past the saddled Bokoblins perimeter before detonating it. They didn’t want to hurt the horses, so the explosion was just meant to spook them into running off—taking their riders with them—for long enough to let Ahnu recuperate.

Deciding a fight wasn’t worth the trouble, they yanked their slate up to their face and quickly ripped off their right glove with their teeth (having since discovered that the screen only registers skin contact), quickly selecting the Shrine nearest to the Outskirts Stable. Teleporting was exactly what they wanted to avoid, because it not only drained them physically, but also discouraged their exploration of new territory. They liked getting around on their feet, not having to depend on something they might not always have. They resolved to not resort to teleporting so often in the future.

Ahnu manifested at the Rota Ooh Shrine, that expected exertion promptly setting in, and they made their way down the mountain and over to the Stable, intent on renting a bed and sleeping until morning. As they made their way in, they realized that they had removed the heart-shaped mask a while ago, and now stood in the middle of the stable, surrounded by other travelers, with their face barred for everyone to see. They stiffened and shook their head around frantically, eyes darting to the people around them. Funnily enough, less people paid Ahnu mind now that they didn’t hide behind an eyesore of a cover. Those who they did manage to attract the attention of only gave them brief, neutral nods of greeting or soft, quick smiles of the hospitable sort. Ahnu felt themself relax a little at the reassuring passivity of the others around them. 

They hadn’t really expected anyone to recognize them per say—after all it had been almost 100 years, right? All the people here were too young, or at least not old enough to have been alive so long ago. 

Ahnu guessed that they just didn’t like being looked at directly a lot. They wore layers of clothing so as to not feel vulnerable in the physically exposed kind of way, and they liked virtually anything that might obscure any or all parts of their face so as to not feel vulnerable more in the emotional sense. Kind of how they didn’t always like having their hands bare, without some form of gloves on. It just made them more comfortable most of the time. 

But here in the warm Stable where no one paid Ahnu any more attention than they did anyone else was, if anything, reaffirming in a way. Not in a way that they exactly understood, but they were content enough with the environment that they didn’t feel the need to pull out the beady-eyed mask. 

They walked over to the Stable Master’s reception desk, who greeted them readily.

“Welcome! Will you—“ Embry paused when he got a good look at the adolescent, recognizing them by the raggedy doublet they wore. “Oh! It’s you! The one with the mask.” he exclaimed. 

Ahnu cringed a little. 

“Glad to see you back in one piece! You came and left pretty abruptly a few days ago, so we were a bit worried.” he said. 

The Stable rarely got new travelers outside of the regular merchants and riders who typically followed along monthly routes, so when Botrick managed to drag along a new patron from one of his nightly patrols, suffice to say the entirety of the stable’s staff took note of the new face—er, mask. Considering that the Hylian behind it was dressed in some worn down garb, and didn’t seem to initially know what money was when he first asked them to not sleep in a bed without paying, it was easy to see why the Stable’s crew was concerned with the well-being of the odd stranger. Embry knew from Botrick that they were at least a good and capable person, as the patrol-man had reassured the day after they departed without a trace, seeing how they had saved him from a gang of skeletal monsters. 

“Heh, from what Botrick said about you, we shoulda’ assumed that you could take care of yourself.” the Stable master said, smiling at them. They didn’t exactly smile back, but the awkward anxiety that had built up the moment he had recognized them abated. “Anyway, will you be staying with us come the night?” he asked. 

‘Yes, please.’ Ahnu signed, pulling out the 20 rupees they had stashed on their person so to avoid having to pull the money out of the Slate in front of him, as well as anyone else in the Stable. They weren’t quite sure what people would think if they were seen handling it out in the open, but for now they just tried to avoid the situation. No one seemed particularly bothered by the presence of the nearby Shrine, and the emergence of Towers all across the land seemed to fade into old news amongst the gossips of the stable, so they weren’t too worried about it considering how integrated—or at least accepted—the monuments of ancient and advanced make were.

“Great!” he exclaimed, accepting the rupees. “I’ll ask Myti to set up the bed. She’ll come grab you when she’s done.” Ahnu nodded in response, then after a quick pause—

“Tha-thank you.” Ahnu quickly uttered aloud, thought just a little too quiet for the distracted Embry to hear while he put away the rupees, before bowing and turning away to go sit at the Stable’s only table. 

While they were waiting, they read some of the supplemented reading material the Stable has to offer, specifically an article named the “Rumor Mill: Volume 3” authored by someone named Traysi, about Koroks. Evidently it was extremely uncommon for people to be able to see them. They had just finished the short report as the Stable-hand came to get them. 

“Hey there! I’ve finished setting up your bed.” the woman rattled off enthusiastically, before her eyes caught sight of Ahnu’s face. “Oh! You poor thing.” she said, genuine worry evident in her voice. “I’ll go grab one of our first aid kits for your cheek. I’ll be right back!” She said as she turned around, heading over to the reception desk to grab the aforementioned supplies.

Ahnu was confused for a moment, bringing their hands up to their face to figure out what she meant, before wincing slightly and pulling their right, slightly bloodied hand away from their cheek, having prodded it a bit too hard. 

Ah. They forgot that they’d been nicked by an arrow, not even a half hour ago. They were about to pull out their Slate to see if anything they had might have been of use to them for dealing with their wound, when Myti came back.

“-I swear, with just how little attention that man pays, he probably wouldn’t have noticed if you’d lost an arm.” she said aloud, though more to herself than to Ahnu. “I brought you some rubbing alcohol and clean gauze.” she said, this time definitely to them, while opening the kit. “Do you need some help taking care of that cut, dear?”

“Oh. Nuh—” Ahnu stuttered aloud, caught off guard. 

‘No thank you.’ they signed, before quickly rephrasing, ‘I mean, thank you for the supplies, but I can tend to the wound alone.’ Ahnu gave a small nod in gratitude in lieu of a bow, hoping that they didn’t seem ungrateful.

“Well, all right then. There’s a mirror over on the support beam.” Myti said, handing off the medical kit to Ahnu. “But don’t hesitate to ask for help if you need it! You can hand that back to Embry at the desk when you’re done.”

Ahnu nodded, taking the open kit and putting it down on the table, promptly setting about cleaning the cut. It wasn’t particularly deep, being more akin to a scratch, and had likely only bled at all on account of the blood that flushed their cheeks when they were active. Ahnu tipped some of the alcohol into a bit of the provided cotton, which stung a little when applied to their cheek generously, but was hardly anything they couldn’t handle. Once they’d finished swabbing it down, they grabbed some of the sticky gauze, and left the table to go look in the mirror.

When they looked into their reflection, they weren’t exactly startled, so much as their face just didn’t register in their mind. It took them over a minute of just looking through themself to actually look AT themself. 

Ahnu already knew that their skin was a warm brown color, and that their hair was dark and brushed their shoulders, but they had no idea that their eyes were grey. It reminded them of the metal of a blade, reflecting light in a dull and blurred matter. The colorlessness was impressionable in it’s own right, the rings of their iris looking like a soft brown when they tilted their head ever so slightly in the direction of a nearby lantern that gently emanated a yellow light.

For a moment, they thought back to the old man. Not him as the King—with brilliant green eyes obscured by a veil of teal, spiritual energy—but him as the disguise he was. His eyes were this very color.

Ahnu shook off the thought, and inspected their visage closer. Their face was... well it was their face. They didn’t really know how to feel about it, only internally addressing their features in an observational, technical manner. Ahnu saw that their eyebrows were dark and softly angled, and their eyes ever so slightly upturned. When they turned their head and ran their fingers along their nose, they could sort of see and feel that it was aquiline. They had wide, straight lips and a jaw that was slightly squared and defined. 

Ahnu’s eyes roamed over faded scars from old wounds they couldn’t recall the sources of, the most prominent of which being a scar just under their chin, which ran diagonal from one side of their the visible portion of their face, before it trailed down below their jawline and out of sight. Tracing it with their fingers, they idly let their hand travel down their neck, where they felt something strange. 

Starting at the left side of their mid-jugular was skin just ever so slightly raised, a slightly different texture than the rest of their delicate neck. The odd tissue was soft and sensitive to the touch. When they shifted to look at it in the mirror, it wasn’t particularly visible, perhaps on account of the setting sun and dim lantern light. They continued to run their fingers down the scarring—well, that’s at least what they assumed it was, but it was incredibly well healed if that was the case, which they found odd for a wound so widespread as to dip down below their collar. 

They tugged at their doublet, seeing that the anomaly ran down their chest. They had half a mind to tug off the clothing that obscured the scar they hadn’t noticed until now—perhaps deliberately—but considering that they’d spent enough time staring at themself in the mirror while they stood in the middle of the Stable, they elected to conduct a thorough investigation the next time they bathed—that is, if they remembered to even bother. They stuck some gauze to the wound on their cheek and walked over to return the kit to the Stable Master before grabbing their weapons and depositing them next to their rented bed. 

They disrobed some, opting to wear only the under-shirt of the Doublet and under-shorts to bed. The sun had just finished setting as they closed the curtain on the bed frame for privacy, and their eyes had followed suit soon after they laid down. 

* * *

Toffa urged young Hati back into the stable just after the sun had dipped below the horizon. Myti was busy doing end-of-the-month inventory in the back of the stable, so he elected to get the youngling ready for bed.

“Why do I hafta’ go to bed so early?” the excitable child whined some. She was having so much fun chasing around the fireflies that had only JUST emerged when the sun had first begun to set, so she was a little upset to cut her activities short. The old man chuckled lightly. 

“Because tonight is the night of monsters, dearie.” He said, before leaning over her and splaying his fingers in a mock-claw formation. He deepened his voice before he added on “We wouldn’t want you to get snatched up by a newly risen servant of evil now, would we?” in dramatic fashion. Now it was Hati’s turn to laugh.

“Okay!” she quickly conceded, smiling brightly at the elder. “I’m going to bed now. G’night Toffy!” She said, before rushing off to her own little bed to change into her night clothes. Toffa smiled affectionately at her exuberance, before he headed back to stand just outside the leftmost Stable entrance. 

His smile slowly gave way to a grim, but still calm expression. It was one of acceptance for something he could not control, save for how he felt about it. 

As he looked up at the night sky, he could see billions of gorgeous stars beginning to dot the darkening heavens. It was a sight he had never once tired of in his long life, and he was certain he never would. But, just as the sky began to shift, he could make out the one phenomenon in the ever-present, ever-changing night sky that he would be just fine never having to witness again. Still, it made itself present like clockwork, as it came yet again at the end of the month, just as it has since before the old man was born. 

He shook his head as the arcs of blood lashed across the sky, tinting the dimming blue of the night in a veil of red.

* * *

_ “Ahnu.” She called out from beyond. _

_ Zelda. Her voice was so clear in Ahnu’s unconscious mind, with no feelings to muddle her message or thought to (deliberately) drown her out.  _

_ “Ahnu...please be careful.” She implored. _

Anhu blinked rapidly once their eyes opened, cutting off whatever she was about to say. They stared at the top cover of the bed frame for a few minutes before drifting back to sleep. 

* * *

Ahnu had forgotten entirely about the Coliseum, until they heard Botrick talking about it in passing as a means to convince a random traveler to buy his arrows. They’d gotten so swept up in looking for Shrines that morning after they’d first stayed at the Stable, running up the mountain to get the nearby one they’d yet to enter. Before long, they’d wandered off in the mesa, running from one distraction to the next. 

_ “Stay focused, Ahnu.” that stern, cool voice chided them. “You can’t be getting so easily distracted.” _

Ahnu was getting used to that voice being the one to admonish them. 

Ahnu spent the early, overcast morning preparing to leave for the Coliseum. They climbed up the side of the mountain it was carved out of, if what the malnourished Stable staffer named Trott was to be believed. He was happy to tell them everything they wanted to know about the grand ruins after they shared some “Gourmet Meat” with him that they got from hunting some wolves in the mesa the other day. 

“Look, I get that you’re an adventurer and all, and can probably take care of yourself—“ they recalled him saying, “—but there are some insanely strong enemies there, according to the travelers we get here that snoop around the area looking for treasure. If you’re dead-set on going, then for the love of Hylia, PLEASE be careful.” They appreciated his concern.

When they were about to set off for the day, he shouted out one last warning from the front of the Stable where he was hauling hay:

“HEY! I almost forgot! If you see this dark, evil looking goop on the ground, do NOT touch it! You’ll know it when you see it.”

They didn’t know what that meant, but figured his warning was sufficient. 

Ahnu made it to the top of the mountain, finding a few Koroks along the way. Botrick had been the one to tell them about the Coliseum entrance to the North of the structure, which is information they elected to ignore in favor of gaining a birds-eye-view of the situation that was the Coliseum Ruins—something they were  _ very _ grateful for doing when they hoped down onto one of the upper levels to observe their surroundings. 

The first thing that caught their attention was the Lynel—a blue one—that roamed the ground floor. The second was that the Coliseum was filled with enemies of a strange color variation— _ “Silver.” _

They counted three silver Moblins on the level just beneath the one they were on and three silver Bokoblins on the second floor. On the third floor however, were three of these strange, lizard-looking monsters that they had yet to see. 

_ “Lizalfos, my dearling.” the deep warm voice said.  _

Well, that’s a pretty derivative name.

Ahnu looked over the Coliseum one more time. Ten enemies, all evenly distributed around the giant circular construction. It was just starting to rain, which would cover any noise that they made along the way, and hopefully obscure their visibility to the Blue Lynel. They roughly knew—more like felt—that silver enemies were sturdy, but that hardly deterred them. They just needed to be careful. 

They tied up their hair in a high ponytail, and got to work.

* * *

It took two hours of Ahnu sneaking around the Coliseum, going from the top-most floors to the bottom, taking out each enemy as quietly as possible with a sword lash to the back to stun them, before they hopped onto the backs of the monsters and looped a sword over to the front of the the creatures necks. Oddly enough, the silver enemies were SO durable that instead of slitting their jugulars with ease, Ahnu more or less had to suffocate the monsters with the apparently dull and flimsy Soldier’s weaponry they wielded. They ended up breaking multiple swords on the necks of their enemies, replacing them with the weapons of the felled monsters along the way. They also happened to pick up a LOT of rare gems from the silver monsters, which they were very pleased with. 

The slate had just finished autonomously storing all the materials from the Bokoblin they had to drag away from the ledge that overlooked the bottom floor. Ahnu crawled back over to the edge of it to get a better look at the only monster that remained in the arena, but caught sight of something far more uneasy for them to look at. 

Ahnu likely hadn’t seen it when they were on top of the ruins on account of the height and angle, and it’s ugliness was obscured by the rain as they had descended the levels of the Coliseum and had been distracted with covertly dispatching the silver enemies. 

From the distance, they saw that it was a dark, viscous looking substance that seemed to be pulsing. Even with the Slates scope, Ahnu couldn’t see it clearly in the rain.

They tried to shrug it off and focus on the Lynel, but ultimately decided against trying to take it on. Their arsenal wasn’t particularly well endowed, and to be honest, they just didn’t feel like fighting it. It was partially due to the rain and generally unsuitable environment for their style of fighting, partially to do with the fact that they just didn’t want to see a Lynel up close right now. 

Having made up their mind, Ahnu quietly slipped out of the Coliseum’s main entrance, only to come face to face with more of that sinister dark substance that they spied from a distance inside the arena. They moved away and out of sight of the Lynel before inspecting the thick layer of matter that seemed to slither all over and around itself, giving off the impression that it was a giant pool of convulsions. It was layered over a portion of the Coliseum grounds, as well as running up the sides of the stone that bordered and supported the massive arena. The stuff was grotesque, to say the least. 

It reminded them of the dark, foul smoke that emanated from cut down monsters. Of the bright, magenta fire that burned within the possessed and decayed guardians. Of the veins of blood that dispersed through ink in their most recent nightmare. 

_ “Malice.” _ Echoed the voice of a King they all but  _ hated _ .

The sight, the proximity—the smell of metal and decay—all of it unsettled Ahnu deeply—viscerally.

Yet they couldn’t look away. The skin beneath their doublet began to burn. 

Horrified and confused, repulsed but almost  _ resonating  _ with just how vile the ichorous substance was, they reached out an unthinking hand— 

Only for their entire body to be yanked backwards. 

* * *

Dai pulled the clay kettle he always traveled with out from over the grate of his stone tablet burner. The fire beneath it ran fierce with the excess of wood the Hylian across from him provided.

“Tea’s done!” he chimed, little to the notice of his otherwise despondent company. He sighed. 

When he first saw them out in the rain earlier that day, with their silhouette shrouded by the downpour, he wasn’t quite sure if they were a person or a monster emerging from the Coliseum. The latter made sense on account of how crazy dangerous the area was, but the former made sense when he remembered that he too was an overly-ambitious Hylian standing only a couple dozen meters away from the Coliseum entrance. 

The drenched Hylian was just... staring at the evil ichor, like they were in some sort of trance. He was about to call out to them when he saw them reach their hand out, as if they were going to straight up  _ touch  _ the stuff, which was crazy, right? Every traveler worth their salt knows the stuff is lethal, like a soul-sapping contact venom. But evidently, this was a Hylian that didn’t know—or just didn’t care, which is a thought that Dai tried to dismiss the implications of. 

He shook that train of thought out of his head, grabbing two cups out of his pack, and pouring the tea. He quietly set one down across the fire, in front of the young stranger, and began to sip his own. The rain had abated come nightfall, but their vacant gaze towards the ground had yet to do the same. It was... a little unnerving, if he were being honest. 

He remembered just how intensely fixated they were on the dark, pulsing goop—so much so that they scarcely noticed him after he’d grabbed them by the back of their doublet to pull them away from the stuff. Their stupor was probably what saved him from being skewered, because seconds after they’d snapped out of their daze and he’d backed away from them ready to ask them just what the HELLS they were doing, they reached for their sword and blindly swung it just where he’d been standing. When they fully turned around to find the enemy their sword hadn’t made contact with, their eyes fixed on a thoroughly shaken Dai. 

Now, that was something that ordinarily would have pissed Dai off (once he was done trembling, that is), and he was fully prepared to scold their ungrateful hide, but then he looked back up at their face—and they looked  _ horrified _ .

Despite the fact that they’d been the one to swing a sword at HIM, he felt like yelling at them would have been something akin to kicking a puppy. A puppy that knew how to proficiently wield a sword, but a wide-eyed, young creature all the same. So he dragged them off to the edge of the Coliseum grounds, under the dilapidated remains of what he figured was once some sort of reception post, where he’d made his camp just under the only bit of ruins with a semi-intact roof. Perfect for getting out of the rain, and just out of the sight of monsters and all of that evil slime. 

Dai insisted on starting a fire to warm the both of them up, to which they wordlessly provided a huge bundle of wood for. He had no idea where they got it from, but when he turned towards them after setting down his pack and weapons, they were holding it all the same, and passed it off to him without meeting his eyes. They sat down as soon as he got the fire going, and hadn’t done anything else since. 

“So, uh...” Dai started, and to his surprise, they actually looked up at him. If he’d know that all it would take was a little direct prompting to snap them out of their funk, he would have tried it hours ago. 

‘I’m sorry.’ they quickly signed. 

So they didn’t talk? Alright then. The silence makes a lot more sense, though them not attempting to sign to him earlier didn’t. He just figured that they were still shaken up about things, like almost slashing him, or whatever it was that drove them to want to touch what everyone could instinctively understand was evil given amorphous form. Most people had dark stuff going on in their heads nowadays, so that he could understand, or at least empathize with. He couldn’t begin to imagine what was running around in  _ their  _ head.

‘I didn’t mean to try to hurt you. I’m sorry.’ they continued to sign, pausing for a moment. ‘I know that you were just trying to help me. Thank you so much.’ they finished, bringing their hands back down to rest on either knee of their crossed legs. 

“Huh.” Dai hadn’t really expected them to be so articulate. “Well alright then. Apology accepted.” He too paused, thinking about what to say next, before figuring he might as well ask. “But uh, can I ask you something? It kinda looked like you were gonna, I don’t know, touch the Bane’s Blood?”

They looked up at him, confused for a moment at his choice of words, before realization set in. 

‘Do you mean the—‘ they stopped, realizing that they didn’t know the sign for the word “Malice.” and not sure if they really wanted to.

‘M-A-L-I-C-E.’ they spelled out. ‘Is that what you meant?’ they questioned.

“Malice? Is that what you call it?” Dai asked in turn, to which they nodded. Dai knocked the word around in his head for a second. “Yeah, you know what? I think that’s what some of the elders back home called it.”

‘Back home?’ they signed in question, tilting their head.

“Oh yeah. You know, Hateno. I think that’s what old Uma called the stuff anyways.” Dai responded, forgetting his original query as a new one came to mind. “Wait, so where are you from?” 

They looked at him strangely, not quite processing. 

“Cause, you kinda look like you’re from Lurelin, but I met a fella from there once, and her ears—“ he pointed to his own ears in demonstration, “—well they didn’t look like yours.” 

They reached up to their own ears, visible to him thanks to their tightly tied up hair. Their eyes widened. 

“Or uh, was that maybe something special your people do to themselves? Like a part of your culture, or something?” he asked, getting a bit squeamish at his own suggestion. Dai himself had pierced ears, but he couldn’t imagine clipping the tips of his own long ear shells into a rounded shape. Maybe they were just born like that? Their own strange ears didn’t look particularly marred or carved, and were curled in a complex manner of their own that looked natural so far in that he could tell. 

When they didn’t respond, Dai figured that he’d hit a soft spot for them, and decided to try and defuse the tension.

“Hey, never mind. It’s not important. I’m just happy you’re not a monster.” Dai said, effectively brushing off the subject. “Anyways, I don’t think I told you my name. I’m Dai, and I’m a treasure hunter. What about you?” he asked before taking a sip of his by now cool tea.

‘A-H-N-U.’ they signed. Ahnu seemed to briefly consider something. ‘I am an adventurer.’ they added, after some deliberation.

* * *

Once Dai had fallen asleep, Ahnu crept away, leaving him to wake up alone with only an untouched mug of tea and a glinting diamond to greet him in the morning.

* * *

Ahnu made it back to the Outskirts Stable in the early morning. They let their hair down to cover their ears, but otherwise didn’t think much else of it for the time being. The shock that came with noticing that their ears weren’t like other Hylians had mostly worn off on the way back. They had no answers to the observation, so they just figured it was an abnormality unique to them among other Hylians and their long, pointed ears. To be honest, they were a lot more excited about the fact that they had piercings on their ears than they were perturbed by the shape of them, as they hadn’t even noticed the small hoop earrings that were made of some brilliant, turquoise, stony looking substance. 

They’d planned to head into the Stable and sleep for a bit, but they’d stalled once they reached the base of the large tree adjacent to the road outside the front of the settlement. 

They kept coming back to this place, and they didn’t know why. 

Well, that isn’t entirely true. They sort of understood that they’d become accustomed to this location. It existed near the Plateau, a place they were loathe to return to but hopelessly attached to nonetheless. It was encapsulated with hills and mountains surrounding it on all sides, blocking out the rest of Hyrule, and by extension, Hyrule Castle if they didn’t follow along the North path. It was an isolated comfort close to the only location that they had considerable familiarity with. 

And they knew that they had to leave it behind. By now, they’d only been brought into this world—or rather, brought  _ back  _ into it—just about three weeks ago. They hadn’t been here long, but they felt like they needed to move on all the same. 

Ahnu was still muddling things over when some mumbling interrupted their thoughts. For a moment, they tensed, thinking it was yet another voice added to their medley of the few they’d grown accustomed to, before they remembered that other people existed around them. They weren’t trapped on a lonesome Plateau anymore, and the world around them was filled with more than ghosts. 

Ahnu heard more whispering, and a giggle, coming from just around the tree that they had their back to. Hooking around the thing, they saw one of the regular patrons at the Stable, or they supposed that she just lived there. If they recalled correctly, they heard one of the Stable-hands refer to her as Aliza. They audibly kicked up some leaves as they made to walk around and away from her, which apparently caught her attention. 

“You’re finally here...” she said a bit louder than her previous mutterings, catching their attention. She stood up and turned towards Ahnu’s direction as they eyed her curiously. “So it was true! I met the hero of Hyrule under this sacred tree!” She exclaimed, elated at the sight of them before she really got a good look at Ahnu. 

Ahnu practically balked at her, their eyes going wide with alarm. Just when they were becoming so sure that they wouldn’t have to worry about being recognized, this woman goes and does just that. Before they could even ask her how, she looked them up and down, her excited expression turning into one of disappointment. 

“Wait...” she said, voice flat. “You’re just that traveler who showed up with that weird mask like, a week ago, right?” she asked, before looking to the ground and mumbling to herself. “And I was so sure, too..“

Ahnu wasn’t really sure if they should have said anything, but figured whatever they had to say would have been as unconvincing as they were unimpressive looking—not that they wanted to clarify their occupation to her. 

“Well, now that I get a good look at you, you’re probably too short to be the hero, and you don’t have the legendary sword.” Aliza concluded. She walked off with a huff too quickly for Ahnu to ask her literally anything. 

Legendary sword? 

Ahnu wondered just what she meant by that, but they were still dealing with the whiplash of her accusation of them as the hero. It made them uncomfortable, and reminded them of the things they tried not to keep on the forefront of their mind. However, despite their negative feelings on the matter, they were still curious about the sword she had mentioned. They considered following her back to the Stable, before remembering their previous dilemma, about how they really needed to set out from the location. 

Deciding that yes, they needed to leave, and that no, they didn’t really want to know what she’d been talking about, they set off back down the trail they’d first come across the Stable from with Botrick. They walked on without looking back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The OG title for this chapter was going to be "Heroics" until I doubled down on the length and shifted the focus. Also, maybe remember Dai's little ear-cutting comment in the future. Anyways, to the East!


	4. Chapter 4--  Ruins Galore and Lessons to Abhor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heading East, Ahnu explores a series of ruins, and are gradually--then abruptly--introduced to a reality they are ill-suited to process. All while trying understand how they feel about various facets of their new-life.

Ahnu had traveled East, along the base perimeter of the Great Plateau from the late morning of their departure into the even later night before they’d found the tail end of a disturbingly large string of ruins they deemed acceptable for temporary habitation. At least, it would be, were it not surrounded by Moblins.

Having spent well over half a day traveling after a sleepless night at the colosseum, Ahnu was NOT in the mood to clear out the area to their preferred specifications. They settled for slitting the throats of the few sleeping Moblins they crossed, as well as any within a tight 50 meter radius of the nearest derelict building that still had roughly four walls. 

Stepping into the threshold of one room of the duplex-like building, minus a functional door and sans roof, Ahnu made to set down their shield, bow, and quiver before hauling the roughly intact flat of an overturned, solid oak dinner table with broken legs over to the stone arc that made up the empty doorway. They slid it into place over the opening, and propped a heap of decayed furniture rubbish and stone that they assume once made up the now absent ceiling against it. Decently assured that nothing could spot them from any angle other than above, they pulled out a thick sheet of canvas they’d scavenged back on the Great Plateau, and set about tying it over the splintered plank remnants of what looked to be a bookshelf. Laying out the rest of it and weighing its ends with stone, they produced what may have been one of the shabbiest and haphazardly thrown together campsites in the history of Hyrule. Ahnu was a bit too tired to care, and was plenty happy with the fact that they at least wouldn’t be spotted by a swarm of Keese. 

Ahnu kicked their weapons underneath the tarp and slipped under themself after disrobing some. Though the night was a bit too cool for their usual tastes (that seemed to be the running theme of the grasslands), exhausting themself for two days straight left their blood boiling beneath their skin.

They poked the top of their head out from under their temporary shelter to look up at the stars. Their laid out, bug-eaten pile of scrap cloth they bundled up to serve as a cushion between themself and the brick inlay beneath them was no Stable bed, but the cloth cover of the bed frames they slept under were sights that paled in comparison to the view above them now. They never bothered to look up all those nights they camped out thus far, but not for any clear and immensely heavy reason, like how they avoided letting their thoughts wander too much so as to not upset themself over trivialities they feel like their lack of memory doesn’t justify getting so wound up about. Things like the voices in their head, the eye on the slate, the shrines and the Monks, the village just beyond the twin peaks they'd been unwittingly (or maybe not so much) inching closer towards. All of these things had some sort of weight—an almost emotional significance to them untold by the Old Man—none of it they wanted to think about. They avoided it like a sword that slashed at their mind. Occasionally it would nick at their thoughts, letting some feelings bleed through, not all of them making sense. There would always be remorse, which was practically self explanatory given the dictated context—they were avoiding their responsibilities. No matter how they tried to frame it in their mind, they were evading their most imperative directions. 

Then there were the odd, inexplicable emotions that engulfed them when they thought of some things they typically only added to their grief, at least on the surface. 

Nostalgia. Endearment.  _ Longing _ . all of these decisively positive emotions started to meld and twist themselves into the mess of melancholy when they beat against the compunction. They felt a strange but not wholly unpleasant twisting in their stomach just when they thought of the most pretense heavy word at the root of most of their issues and impasses thus far— _ Sheikah _ .

Ahnu blinked away the wetness in their eyes before it had a chance to leave glistening trails down either side of their head. Snapped out of their unfortunate reverie, they refocused on some star clusters and constellations they almost recognized. Why they never bothered to look up any other night before now was a mystery to them. The stars were beautiful and bore no weight towards them, floating as freely in their conscience as they did in the sky.

Soon enough their eyes closed and began to drift, just like clouds that started to eclipse the stars. 

* * *

Ahnu spent the better part of the daylight (not that there was that much to begin with, on account of them waking up well past noon) scavenging the ruins of what they assume used to be some sort of large militant village. They figured as much based on the several pole mounted banners, the soldier memorabilia decorating the building interiors, the sheer amount of old and rusted weaponry, as well as the countless surprisingly still intact crates full of preservatives and aging barrels of water and gunpowder. 

The stale food rations were unappealing and the water was somewhat unnecessary considering just how many sources of fresh water there was available to them in their travels, but Ahnu did wrap up a few kilograms of gunpowder in some scrap cloth and fiddle with the Slate until it would accept their neatly bundled up explosives. They figured the stuff would come in handy at some point, and even if they couldn’t figure out how to make their own bomb arrows, they could always trade the stuff away. 

Ahnu finished inspecting the large amount of sealed goods that were corralled around the crumbling fountain in the center of a small plaza, its state of destruction likely attributed to the somewhat intact but blessedly inactive guardian that was draped over the rim of its basin, a single clawed and segmented appendage frozen in time the moment it was brought down upon the now partially shattered upper tier of the stone construct. There were a few other guardians they’d seen thus far littered about the place, thankfully equally inert. They tried to pay them little mind, but it seemed like the runic chassis of one of them were always ever present in the corner of their eyes no matter where they looked. The more they saw them, the more they began to notice the deeply carved rivulets in what portions of buildings that weren’t outright torn apart in the very obvious onslaught that occurred here. Scores of three marked in stone everywhere made their mind run wild, imagining the malicious machines scrambling about the outpost when it was more than just rubble and ruins. More bad thoughts to dismiss. 

Ahnu’s gloved fingertips traced the weather-worn carvings that ran below and parallel to the rim of the fountain, taking in the details of the delicate handmade patterns of ivy and other flora inscribed in the stone, desperate for some tangible and gentle distraction from their darker and harsher thoughts. They noticed how the lower tier of the fountain boasted a few inches of water despite it’s desolation, likely on account of frequent rains that plagued lower grasslands, leaving multiple pond-like puddles all about the ruins as well. It was overcast for nearly the entire day they’d spent scavenging, and they figured that it would start raining sometime late in the night or early in the morning, the Slate’s weather sensor application seeming to back them up on the supposition. 

Ahnu decided to resume their inspection of the ruined remnants, finding little else that some rare gems, arrows, and more rusty weaponry strewn about, the latter they continued to pass up on collecting. Oddly enough, they did happen to find a partially intact book of sorts among the wreckage of one building. It looked to be some sort of diary that was torn in half at the spine. They figured that it had once belonged to one of the soldiers that were quartered here. They shoved their mask off of their face, rotating it to the side of their head so they could better read the cover. 

It read as “Misko’s Jounal: DO NOT READ” so of course Ahnu opened it immediately. 

Apparently, whoever this soldier was, they doubled as a covert thief. The journal seemed to account for several treasures and ancient garb they’d stolen from Hyrule Castle in the years leading up to the Calamity, back when the royal family and guard were too busy dealing with the ever-impending disaster to notice or bother tracking the disappearance of several locked away relics. This book was supposed to chronicle all the treasures they’d hidden away instead of selling off. 

The very first entry had them reeling, as it dictated the presence of some sort of “ancient mask“ at a small outpost near the Kolomo Lake, which if Ahnu had remembered correctly, was the name a stable hand at the Outskirts had dubbed the lake Ahnu had first awoken by after leaving the Great Plateau. The place where they’d woken up curled around a strange mask. The very mask they wore on the side of their head as they read. 

They quickly tugged their Sheikah Slate off of their hip, opening the notes function they’d neglected to explore the use of up until now, and recorded all of the hints and directions the journal provided. 

The journal’s entries ended abruptly, on account of the fact that the book was torn in half. The last damp and molded over page concluded simply with:  _ “I’ve hidden the other half of my journal at home, in a village not too far from the Outpost I served at as a soldier. If you find it, you’ve found me.” _

Ahnu didn’t really know what to make of the entries, aside from feeling rather confident in their veracity. They figured that the directions scribed by this “Misko” were probably obvious to anyone with a decent grasp of the geography of Hyrule, or even just anyone in possession of a very detailed map. Neither of said specifications applied to Ahnu, which left them at a loss for where the other half of the journal could possibly be, as well as downright confused when it came to the locations vaguely implied to be where the various treasures the thief had stolen over the years now resided. Regardless, they’d gleamed all they could from the half-journal, and went right back to scavenging until nightfall. 

Ahnu had seen few monsters patrolling the ruins, but they found far more sifting about the woods that ran parallel to the ruins. They’d waited well into the night to clear out the forest, when all the monsters would be asleep and easy to pick off one by one. After a dozen or so encounters with sleeping Moblins and Bokoblins alike, they’d plundered the monsters of parts and supplies, even finding some treasure in a camp. 

They’d also found an interesting elevated lookout post of Hylian construction with several explosive barrels and some fire enchanted arrows on top. They considered making camp up on the post for the night, seeing the height as a good enough deterrent for any monsters that couldn’t fly, but decided against it on account of not being tired. They briefly lamented at how consistently atrocious their sleep schedule was before they made their way down the ladder. 

A few more ruined buildings, a few more monsters taken sleeping and unaware, and more treasure (and koroks) to be found. By the time morning came around, Ahnu had made it to the end of the cobble brick that lined the old Outpost’s road, after which the suggested path led to a bridge. It was there that they’d found another Shrine. 

* * *

It was a simple puzzle by all means, and a quick one too. Some sort of turbines embedded in walls produced an intense and steady flow of wind that served to bridge the gap of nothingness between platforms. Ahnu had easily drifted along the artificial gust on their paraglider, as well as collected a decent Soldier’s Claymore to replace the one they’d recently broken while taking out sleeping enemies. All in all, it was an almost relaxing endeavor, even if it did make them question the seeming infallibility of the Sheikah that constricted the shrine. How would they have known that Ahnu would have a paraglider, or any sort of gliding contraption that would prove sufficient? Was it just a prerequisite the expected hero they waited for to have already fulfilled? It was a silly query, they knew, but it was more fun to think about than the grim reality of what was about to happen once they broke the stasis field that encased and preserved the maker of the Shrine in question. 

They reached for the wall of weaved light, and tapped at it quickly with their gloved fingers before retracting their hand. In seconds, the strings snapped and the light burst forth, just as it had every time before. 

_ “Your resourcefulness in overcoming this trial speaks the promise of a hero...” _

They still never knew what to say to the Monk’s, if there was anything they could say that would matter. They weren’t even sure if the withered oblate  _ could  _ hear them, or even acknowledge them enough to register any kind of sentiment at all. 

_ “In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I bestow upon you this spirit orb.” _

That all too familiar nausea that came with the feeling of a foreign soul joining the collection that resides among their own came and went, as their body accepted the orb without further issue. They also wondered if that brief discomfort was a real physical sensation, or just a perceived wave of illness that came with knowing the morose significance of an act of endowment they still felt unworthy of. Ahnu doubted this feeling would ever go away. 

_ “May the Goddess smile upon you.” _

The final utterance of the Monk regained their attention, and shifted their thoughts back to how wrong it felt to just watch them disappear in silence. A sudden urge to rectify what they considered almost an injustice seized the air in their lungs, and made use of it before they even had time to process what they were doing.

“I-“ Ahnu piped up, a bit louder than they meant to project. Their hands came up to grasp at their chest, each grabbing a fistful of their doublet. They were loosely aware that they’d meant to bring them together in prayer, but faltered in light of a sudden anxiety that seized them. They didn’t know what they were doing (but that was nothing new). They didn’t know what they would say. They didn’t know if it would matter. They didn’t know anything, and yet, regardless—

“I wish you well-“ Ahnu quickly spoke to the rapidly disintegrating Monk, hoping that some part of their counter-blessing would be recognized.

“-in your departure...” they finished a bit too late, their final words meeting nothing but the empty air where the Monk once sat.

Ahnu didn’t linger in their own disappointment for too long. They would be faster next time, they resolved to themself. 

I wasn’t until they were back on the surface, boots treading earth, that they realized they’d spoken in the tongue of the Sheikah. 

* * *

“Man, you really shouldn’t scare people like that, you know?” Brigo scolded for the upteenth time, as he sat down beside them. Ahnu just nodded along to their new acquaintance’s continuous admonishment.

True to Ahnu’s speculation, it had been raining ever since the early morning that they’d emerged from the Shrine. The expected downpour hadn’t alleviated in the slightest throughout the cloud dimmed day, the most of which they spent climbing the mountain their most recently completed Shrine rested at the base of to get a better vantage at the old stone brick lookout up top, which proved to be a redundant effort when they decided to head back to cross the bridge they spotted back on their original path. After camping out in the mountain top post, hiding from the downpour for the better part of the day and we’ll into the next (sleeping what most would probably consider a disturbingly long time), Ahnu headed back down towards the bridge they’d strayed from, foraging herbs and bugs, finding Koroks, and scoping out a monster camp. Somewhere in between all of that, they met Brigo. 

“Oh man, it’s really coming down.” Brigo commented on the rain, looking out from under the freestanding wooden awning they both rested under. “Probably not gonna stop anytime soon.” he added on, before he started tending to the fire Ahnu started almost an hour ago. 

Sometime after they’d descended the mountain, they spotted a wooden chest as it emerged from under the bridge, floating down the river in the direction of a waterfall a few kilometers downstream. Wanting to prevent a chest filled with possible treasures from getting too far away, Ahnu hopped up on the parapet of the bridge and pulled out their Slate, intent on using the Cryonis function to elevate the chest and hop over to it—only to be interrupted by a sort of well meaning and incredibly neurotic bystander. 

Brigo had given them some chastise and promised to talk more to them after his self imposed shift was done, and in return they respectfully waited for him to turn around and resume his patrol before they vaulted over the side of the bridge and onto one of their raised ice-blocks. 

After acquiring a few bomb arrows and raiding the Bokoblin camp on the other side of the river, they were awash with a probably unwarranted amount of exhaustion on account of how recently they'd slept—and also rainwater—so they set up camp under the overhang Brigo had mentioned sometime just before evening had set in. 

“Thanks for the fire. So you asked about, uh, the Castle, right? Brigo asked, a tad nervously. 

Ahnu nodded. Brigo sighed. 

“Okay, look—“ Brigo started in a matter-of-fact kind of tone. “I don’t know how many lives you’ve got, but if you really plan on heading to a place with that many Guardians, I can guarantee you—” he pointed an accusatory finger at them, inches from their nose, “—it’s not enough!”

Ahnu raised their open hands in an acquiescent manner, before starting to sign a correction to his assumption. Unfortunately, Brigo had already turned away from them, and was frantically shifting from gesticulating to the nearby derelict guardian across the pathway not too far from where they both sat, to the one across the river that sat in a pile of rubble, to Hyrule Castle itself as he continued to ramble on.

“I mean, you DID hear what I told you earlier, right? They shoot insta-kill, blue beams of light at you!” Brigo raved on frantically. “Dozens of the ones that still move around surround the Castle, and rove the fields around it!”

Ahnu waved their hands around, trying to get his attention as he kept on speaking, all to little effect. 

“Honestly, you adventure types! I think you’re better off just looking at it from here!” He went on, leaving little capacity for Ahnu to respond, as he still faced away from them. “I mean just look at all that menacing aura emanating off of it! What are you even gonna do when you get there?” he asked, likely rhetorically since he showed no signs that he would stop talking anytime soon. It was Ahnu’s turn to sigh. They considered tapping his shoulder to get his attention, but they weren’t exactly comfortable with the idea of touching him. They resolved to do something else. 

“I—” they hesitantly began to speak, but were promptly cut off.

“Seriously, don’t go! It’s not worth it! Just look at it!” Brigo prattled on obliviously and somewhat annoyingly. 

**“** _**I am!** _ _**”**_ Ahnu piped up, a little louder than they meant to. Brigo snapped his head back around to them, wide-eyed and clearly in shock that they spoke, since he’d only known them to sign in the past few hours he’d known them. 

“Ah-I’mm nah-not,” they continued, speech deteriorating into a jumble of stutters and odd stretches in their aggravation, “ **Not!** Not goh, goh-ohing!” They finished, turning away from Brigo and the Castle to look down into the fire, needing something else to think about. 

They didn’t like it when they couldn’t form words right. It took a lot of concentration to speak around others as is, and they especially struggled when their focus was split between managing their speech AND their feelings. Their throat already stung with that by-now familiar tightness that they felt when they got a little too emotional. They stared a little too intensely at the flames, waiting for some sort of distraction to hop out of the embers.

Brigo looked away and rubbed the back of his neck out of nervous habit. To say he felt a bit awkward was an understatement. He guessed that he didn’t give them apt opportunity to respond to his very reasonable—if a tad presumptuous—concerns, especially if it made someone who he’d figured must have at least been unaccustomed to speaking actually _talk_. When he looked back to them, they were still staring intently at the fire, and breathing pretty deeply too. Brigo decided that he’d better make peace. 

“Hey, uh...” Brigo said, a bit too quiet for the average person to hear, but when the normally quiet Hylian in front of him looked back to him, he remembered that when he’d first met them earlier, he didn’t interpret them as all too ‘normal.’ “I sorta stopped paying attention and kept on rambling at ya’ so you couldn’t reply, right?” Brigo asked, to which he received a quick nod. He noticed that even when they faced him, they didn’t maintain eye contact when interacting with him, pupils always looking away and studying something else before momentarily darting to meet his to assure that they were paying attention. Maybe they were nervous, or maybe they just didn’t like looking directly at people constantly. He shrugged off the thought and continued on, “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. My Ma’ always did say I was a scatterbrained chatterbox. Guess I got it from her!” Brigo chuckled a little awkwardly at his own joke, hoping it would diffuse the tension, only to be disappointed when he saw that the other Hylian stared at him rather impassively. 

“Heh, uh... anyway, yeah. I’m sorry I didn’t give you a chance to speak—er, sign.” Brigo finished, a bit embarrassed. Ahnu seemed to consider his apology, and then they closed their eyes and nodded before pulling their quiver closer to themself and taking out arrows one by one to inspect them. Brigo let out a sigh of relief at the acceptance of his apology. He leaned back, splaying his hands behind him on either side to support himself, and thought for a moment. “Wait.” he resumed, pulling their attention away from their arrows. “What did you want to know about the Castle, anyway?” he asked. 

‘I was curious.’ Ahnu signed with a single arrow still in their hand.

“Oh... well then.” Brigo said, realizing that his earlier dismay really was just that unnecessary. “Was uh, there anything else you’re curious about then? I’ll try not to freak out too much this time.”

Ahnu thought about his offer for a moment, and they remembered something that made them perk up just a bit. They put down their arrow and turned fully towards Brigo.

‘What’s the nearest village to-‘ they paused their signing for a moment to point across the bridges from where they came, Brigo’s eyes following along and pausing on some of the distant destroyed buildings before looking back to them and waiting for them to continue, ‘the ruins there?’ they promptly finished. 

“The Outpost Ruins, huh?” he said, and they nodded in confirmation despite not knowing the rather obvious in hindsight name of the location before just now. “Well, not including stables, that would be Kakariko.” he simply replied. 

Ahnu stilled. That wasn’t the answer they expected, or wanted.

“Though...” Brigo continued, putting his hand to his chin and looking off towards the Dueling Peaks. “That place is well a way’s off from here.” He turned back towards them, “And that’s only if you’re talking about active settlements.” That last statement caught Ahnu’s attention.

‘And what about inactive settlements?’ they asked.

* * *

_ “Just keep going down the trail beside this river here,” Brigo said as he chomped into the salt-rubbed mushrooms he’d been grilling over the fire. After swallowing, he continued: “once you see the hollowed out trunk of an old, GIGANTIC fallen tree—you can’t miss it—follow it’s string of bark-shells up the low mountain line, and you’ll be there.” _

Ahnu recalled Brigo’s directions as they settled at the base of the small mountains he’d mentioned, staring down the mouth of the semi-petrified, partial husk of what used to be a truly gargantuan tree. They downed a few apples before starting the hike up the mountain, particularly grateful that traveling up the virtually unused trail through the several remnant trunk shells granted them periods of relief from the downpour that hadn’t stopped since it had started the morning before. They were even more grateful when they’d spotted a Korok flower, which made their hike a little more interesting. 

As they pursued the puzzle of a forest child, occasionally stopping to forage or just examine the moss that grew on the stone-solid, millennia old bark, they thought about the rest of the conversation they had with Brigo the night before. 

_ “But uh, hey? Can I ask you something?” Brigo said in a soft, almost tentative sort of tone, bringing their attention away from their own food.  _

_ ‘Yes.’ Ahnu signed, proceeding to chomp into one of their own mushrooms with abandon on account of the fact that they didn’t need their mouth to communicate.  _

_ “Why do you wanna go there? It’s been abandoned since the Calamity—“ Brigo paused for a quick second, before clarifying “—though I suppose you could say that about most places. But seriously, there isn’t much there. Not in terms of treasure or even monsters.” He scraped another mushroom off of his stick, chewing and swallowing in quick succession before adding on: “Guardians passed right through that place without so much as stopping, completely decimating it in one fell swoop. The place has been picked clean by adventures over the decades on account of how not-dangerous it is—relative to most ruins I mean.”  _

_ Ahnu thought about his question, and briefly considered telling him about the journal they’d found, but it seemed that soon enough Brigo had come to his own conclusions.  _

_ “Are you, uh, traveling to pay your respects?” Brigo added onto his original question.  _

_ Ahnu looked up at him from their now empty skewer with a curious tilt of their head, somewhat confused at the leap in logic. Brigo seemed to catch onto just how offbeat his question was. _

_ “Oh! It’s just, I—” Brigo started, cutting himself off, before he looked away from Ahnu almost sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck as he gazed into the fire. “I just sorta figured...” he trailed off, dropping his hand into his lap where the fingers interlaced with his other hand, having tossed aside his own skewer. His eyes narrowed a bit in contemplation, and for the first time, his usually stress-set brow unfurrowed amidst his deep thought.  _

_ Ahnu was a bit surprised to see Brigo so uncharacteristically calm, granted they’d only known him for a few hours, but considering that in that time he hadn’t once abandoned his anxious demeanor and penchant for discussing the imminent apocalypse, it was a fair impression of his person all things considered. They were even more surprised by what he said next.  _

_ “I was from there.” He said, glazed eyes glued to the embers. _

_ Ahnu snapped the skewer in their clenched hand, the noise seeming to jolt Brigo out of his short trance.  _

_ “Oh! I mean, not me, specifically.” Brigo added on, trying to diffuse the tension in the air. “My family! My family was from there!” he frantically clarified, waving his hands about as if he were physically brushing away the vulnerability that permeated the surrounding space. “Yeah, my great-grandparents were the last generation of my family to live there before—well, you know. End of Hyrule and all.” _

_ “Ah.” Ahnu remarked vocally, an unprecedented amount of relief flooding them.  _

They received the seed from the Korok on the stump of the old tree that the bark trail belonged to, only paying half a mind to the quick quip the childling prattled off, the other half of their mind occupied by just how lucky it was that Brigo had been as presumptuous as he was. They couldn’t be certain, but they strongly felt that telling him about how they planned on rummaging through the rubble of his ancestral home on a hunch that a soldier-thief hid the latter half of a diary there almost a century ago would be received as a bit insensitive. 

A quick walk over one last hill, relative to the old stump, left Ahnu on the rim of the mountain line that encompassed their slightly flooded destination on all sides like a bowl, the contents of which went almost unseen in the shower that served to obfuscate it. 

Deya Village. Rather, what was left of it. 

* * *

Walking about the ankle-high waters without their boots or their doublet jacket, Ahnu pulled away from yet another one of the several (very redundant) wells present throughout the former village with an arm-full of glowing shells, before all dematerialized in a flash of blue. 

They weren’t sure what Brigo had meant by picked clean, because they’d found plenty of weapons and snails! Granted, most of the things people would probably consider conventionally valuable were few and far between, mostly obscured by particularly obstructive wreckage that most people probably wouldn’t have bothered digging around in for the sake of a few elemental arrows or the odd opal scattered about. 

In all fairness, the bridge patrolman had been pretty accurate about the lack of threat to be found in the area, as the total count of monsters in the vicinity of the decimated village amounted to no more than a pair of blue Lizalfos and a single, aggravatingly tough Talus with a VERY annoyingly placed ore for a weak spot. 

It would be a lie to say that Ahnu hadn’t expected there to be  _ something  _ hidden amongst the ring of rocks with a single suspiciously prominent mound in the middle, so when a Talus had ambled up from the islet it had been resting on, they weren’t all that alarmed. What DID give them pause was what they couldn’t see on the rock creature, specifically it’s lack of a protrusion that signified a weak spot of any sort. 

They figured it must have been the light rain (which had only let up to a drizzle, but never actually stopped), or the darkness that descended post sunset that rendered them unable to spot the telltale ore on it's rugged pate. When it was clear that no amount of leaning over the edge of the rocks they perched on would grant them better vantage, they backed up some before leaping onto the Talus’ front. If the boulder of a beast hadn’t noticed them before, it’s sudden thrashing made it clear that Ahnu was a recognized and unwanted pest. 

Ahnu managed to make it to the top of the Talus just as it slammed itself forward, smashing its face into the crushed, rocky surface below. As the thing idled in the rock and water, shifting slowly as it prepared to regain its erected posture, Ahnu swung their iron sledgehammer off of their back, primed and ready to strike at a target that was...decidedly in the wrong place. 

Well wrong might not have been the correct word. Unexpected to be sure, what with it being on the equivalent of the creature’s back, but at least it existed at all, which made taking out the Talus actually possible. Ahnu raised their hammer up and prepared to slam the stone, but hesitated when they got a better look at it. It was beginning to glow. 

They stared at it, the soft teal eminence that picked up in the wake of the night transfixing them. It was beautiful and haunting all the same, reflecting off of every surface that sheened with the wet of the prior showers—the color reminiscent of that that encompassed the dead king. 

The comparison immediately stoked recent memories they’d been trying  _ not _ to think about.

Unfortunately, their hesitation coupled with their lack of attentiveness resulted in them being thrown to the shallow water when the Talus finally made its way to its feet. At least being tossed off of the thing was a sufficient enough interruption to the grim memory and ensuing spiral of unwanted thoughts.

_ “Distracted, yet again” came a cool, clearly dissatisfied voice from behind them.  _

They ignored it.

Ahnu had dealt with the “ _ Luminous Talus _ ” soon enough, though not without some hardship. The rain made them slip when they climbed the creature, and the position of its weak-spot put it out of reach of their hammer from the ground and unbelievably difficult to strike when boarded. Eventually, Ahnu had to humble themself and retreat from the damned thing, seating themself out of sight behind some ruins. They yanked the Slate off of their hip, pulling out a neat curvy red bow they took from some Bokoblins that was carved with enchantments of duplicity, as well as a quiver-full of bomb arrows. They stepped out from their hiding place and made their way back over to the Talus that was twisting all about trying to sense them in the rain that threw off it’s echolocation, exposing its back and its ore to them. They grumbled as they nocked an arrow, not particularly enthusiastic about wasting the precious resource. Thankfully, the drizzle wasn’t enough to put out the fuse.

In the end, it only took 10 (so 20?) of their explosive arrows to down the big boulder, Their consolation for the lame encounter being plenty of stones that glowed with the same brilliance as that of the Talus’ ore deposit. Not too bad. 

Considering how dark (and wet) it was though, they decided to take refuge in the remains of an almost entirely destroyed cabin on the northeastern corner of the village. It had half a floor and a single wall, but with the remnants of a roof serving as a serviceable overhang that granted enough room for a fire, it had to do. 

* * *

It was late in the morning when they’d finally found what they’d originally come to Deya for. Ahnu had scoured the entire former village, trudging through now knee-high waters without their boots or pants, and still managed to miss the water logged half-journal trapped under a wood beam they only bothered to lift because a Tireless Frog tried to hide from them under it. Thankfully, whoever Misko was, they had the sense to write on treated parchment in water insoluble ink.

Six more supposed treasures hidden around Hyrule in vague locations that Ahnu had not even the slightest inkling as to how they would go about procuring. It was entirely unlikely that they’d ever out of their way to any of these treasures, but considering that they’d found the mask on accident, it was an exciting potential prospect nonetheless. 

Their musing about what the journal referred to as the “Faron” region was halted when they actually processed the last page of the journal that they’d been unthinkingly reading over and over until the words actually stuck. It was hard to tell, what with the pages having long since deteriorated with age and waterborne mold eating at them, but the final entry seemed to have been written with enough pen pressure to leave a prominent indent in the back cover (rather, the only cover since the diary was only a half). It was short. Just two sentences, scrawled almost haphazardly, the letters leaning as if they were written at an angle—or in a hurry. 

_ “You found me.” _

Ahnu squinted at the scrabble, the latter half of page being written in comparatively worse handwriting, heavily obscured by an abundance of brown splotches that couldn’t be smeared off of the pages like the black and white growths of mold could. 

_ “Too bad some ~~body~~ thing else did first.” _

Ahnu blinked at the words, waiting for them to register. They idly traced the letters with their index, as if they could absorb the intent through the imprint they left in the parchment. That was when they saw it. The blots of brown that smeared across the page weren’t as random as they’d assumed from a glance, far too focused on the words on the page to pay attention to the obvious dark print of the fingers on a hand. 

Blood. This was someone’s blood. Their blood, their fingers— _ their last words _ .

Ahnu flinched, dropping the book as if it had burned them. They had turned around before it hit the floor, sprinting off into the downpour (that seemed to never end) as it picked up as if the very sky were in tune with their mood. 

* * *

They’d found another line of hollowed out tree husk. Well, Ahnu had actually spotted it the day before yesterday, when they first came to Deya. They’d just been too wrapped up with picking through the remains of the former village to bother. Now, it seemed like as good a time as any to follow it up. 

Ahnu hiked at a leisurely pace, foraging a load of different mushrooms as they slowly trekked the path. The late dark of the night—or the dark of a morning too early, they couldn’t tell—coupled with the rain clouds that dimmed the moon into obscurity made the blanket of shadow that draped everything all the more pervasive. They absolved themself of darkness, to a limited degree, by activating the Slate and opening their materials menu, turning the device around on their hip so that it faced screen outwards. It illuminated a rough radius around them, which wasn’t much, but was better than nothing. 

The last two days had felt so off. It wasn’t the usual discomfort they felt about literally anything that made their thoughts stray from the moment they occupied. It went without saying that reminiscing on the past was an impossibility (though not exactly an unfortunate one), while trying to imagine it was unpleasant to say the least. Filling in the gaps with no more than a detached, analytic sort of deduction was jarringly harrowing, in a way. Almost wrong. 

As they contemplated the context of their malaise, they began to notice the gradual clarity of the area around them. Moss growing on the smooth interior of the hollowed bark. Small flowers in the grass, and the bugs that hopped around them. The rain slowed to a drizzle, then to a mist, the haze catching the light of a sunrise that peeked over the horizon and through the parting clouds. For the first time in days, unfiltered sunlight was gracing the region of the ruins, rays beginning to shine through the breaks and disjointed gaps in the tree-shell path from behind them. Ahnu didn’t turn to face the light, but they were sure that had they not mounted a Soldier’s Shield on below their shoulder blades, they would have felt the warmth of the light through their wet doublet. How had it gotten so bright, so quickly? 

They took note of a Korok flower they’d have to trail back down through the truck they’d just finished venturing up, but otherwise ignored for the time being in favor of investigating the surprising hollowed out stump of the old, large tree. Unlike the one that rested on the opposite side of the basin of Deya, the tree here wasn’t deliberately cut. Closer examination of the ragged edges of the stump above them, as well as what they’d just seen on the bark shell closest to the stump, they surmised that some form of wood-rot likely damaged the structural integrity of this tree a  _ very  _ long time ago, causing it to collapse in towards the village. The hollowed stump was in a state of petrification beyond that of the one they’d traveled prior. Perhaps that’s why the other tree was chopped down. Once it grew to a disconcerting size, or leaned in a troublesome direction that concerned the folks of Deya who’d already witnessed the collapse of a gargantuan dark oak, they’d made to cut the thing down in a direction that would cause little trouble. 

Ahnu furrowed their brow and shook their head. They were starting to get fed up with their own distracted antics, and settled on gathering the host of fungi the hollowed stump housed in excess as a matter of busying themself. If it wasn’t clear to themself by now, they were certainly not in a good mood. 

It was leaps in logic like this—all of the possibilities for what could have happened and where—that continually assaulted their mind, as if they were obtrusive entities not born entirely from Ahnu’s own speculation. Some of the topics they’d stewed over in their brief month of cognizance proved interesting, while others were annoying or downright insensitive in their observations.

Was that the problem? Some part of their subconscious protesting their apathy? Clearly this was going to be yet another subject for them to fixate on against their better interests—whatever those were, anyway.

They exited the stump, mulling over their state of mind and general gloom, staring down at their boots as they walked. Their inattention was an obvious mistake, seeing how they almost immediately walked into the branches of the only cluster of saplings in the near vicinity. Ahnu shot the offending oaks a dirty look as if they'd been growing in the very spots they were for the last few years with the very intention of obstructing and mildly inconveniencing them. They calmed down almost as soon as they realized how ridiculous they were being, and when their gaze drifted beyond the lithe limbs of the small tree, their brows went from furrowed to raised.

Stepping back from the bundle of trees, Ahnu took in the grand sight before them. 

Off in the distance was a colossal stone bridge, the sheer size of it making even the finer details on the faces of the arcs and the bases of the piers visible. Ahnu estimated that the bridge had to be just about as long as how far away they were from it, which is to say roughly five kilometers from one stone gateway to the other. It sported seven support columns on either side of a gigantic center structure, not including its abutments—though, technically, it only possessed 10 minor piers in total on account of the fact that two were destroyed on both sides. 

The sight of the incredible structure over a glistening lake in the morning light afforded the smallest gasp from Ahnu. It was captivating enough a sight that they hadn’t noticed the Ancient Sheikah Tower literally right next to it. Well, there was just another thing they’d eventually have to deal with. 

Turning around, intent on dealing with the Korok flower from earlier, Ahnu was met with yet another, beautifully sad sight. 

The waters of the Deya basin—having risen significantly over the past few days—practically glittered golden in the early light like sand, speckled with bits of dark debris that broke the reflection in places. Walking over to stand next to the edge of the old stump, their gloved hand dragging along its time-smoothed surface absently, more of the ruins came into view. That’s when it finally clicked for them. It was an obvious observation, to be sure, but one they’d yet to stumble upon on account of just how cognitively and emotionally divorced they were from the reality they were presented—until now that is. 

This used to be someone’s home. 

That’s why it felt so wrong. People used to live here. It wasn’t just a military outpost, where soldiers were cycled out regularly, or the odd structure that was completely separate from society. This was a place with a people who were now either as gone as their village or as scattered about as the wreckage of their livelihoods in the murky waters of their ancestral ground. Whatever history there was to this place was lost, or smeared in obscurity, like ink and blood on paper. 

The remnants of this old society, slowly being overtaken by rain and groundwater and all matters of algae, were just one more melancholic reminder of what had happened, and how time and nature had carried on completely indifferent to it all. 

Ahnu’s chest felt tight, but not as heavy as it was before. There was a certain sort of relief that came with the clarity that accompanied their full understanding of the severity of the devastation before them. If it was something they could rationalize, then there was closure to be had in how they felt about the death of a people, and in extension, a civilization. It wasn’t a pleasant realization to be had, but it was one step in moving on from the depressing discomfort they felt amongst the ruins of a time long past. 

Getting in one last elevated glance at the village, Ahnu looked on less than indifferently, and then proceeded to make their way down the segmented line of hollowed bark from whence they came.

* * *

Ahnu returned to the former building where they found the rest of Misko’s journal. They buried the half-book in the sands just outside the domain of what they assumed to have once been the thief’s home. They gave a quick prayer, not dissimilar to the one that they gave the Monk of the last Shrine they’d visited, albeit a tad bit more overdue, and set off on their way back to the riverside path they’d diverted from on their detour to the decimated settlement. 

Just because time and nature wouldn’t care doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clearly, there is some part of them that hasn't come to grips with mortality and tragedy in the world, but this was just the unfortunately necessary push they needed to get on the road to recognizing reality. Next up. we're off to the Twin Peaks, but not for the reason you might expect! Thanks for reading along!


	5. Chapter 5--  Mountainous Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After learning that their new and favorite mask isn't quite what it seems to be and then activating their second Sheikah Tower, Ahnu's new Shrine Sensor application takes them up the sundered mountains, where they come to learn something very convenient about their not-so-normal paraglider.

So, apparently the heart mask was a sort of camouflage amongst monsters. 

Ahnu was sitting cross legged near the river shore next to a small forest, the Dueling Peaks and yet another Sheikah Tower just a few kilometers downstream. Being as close as they’ve ever been to the sundered mountain, it was quite the sight to see it from their current position, though probably not as much a sight as the oddly masked Hylian sitting in a circle of lively Bokoblins. 

They’d stumbled across the odd bunch as they trekked along the path towards the split peaks. They’d strayed from the forest-bound path when they heard the commotion the group was making, fully intending to clobber all of them. It’d been a while since they’d taken down a few monsters, and Water Octorok, though annoying, weren’t much of a challenge. Strangely enough, when they came out of the woodworks in broad daylight, the swine-men weren’t surprised in the usual violent sort of way, but in the average, inquisitive sort of way that a person would react to a spectacle. 

The mask they wore was certainly strange—Ahnu sensed that something about it was off, though ultimately harmless, ever since they’d picked it up—but this was on an entirely different level of unique. The monsters inspected them from every angle, seemingly unbothered by the fact that Ahnu was a mostly Hylian shaped entity holding a sledgehammer, not quite getting that their ‘face’ was a disjointed slab of intricately dyed and enchanted wood strapped to the head of something that was decisively non-monster looking. The whole ordeal was enough of a curiosity that Ahnu elected to ride out the situation for all that it was worth, wanting to see how far they could take the whole charade and how long before one of the monsters noticed. They were betting on the interestingly colored golden one picking up on their facade first, but so far, no such (un)luck. It seems that whatever evil magic made the differently colored Bokoblins stronger or weaker than one another had no bearing on the scaling of intelligence. 

Ahnu had spent the entire night amongst the cheerful group, sitting quietly with arms crossed as they observed the monsters socialize happily. It was almost...normal? Ahnu figured that if they could successfully divorce themself from any and all preconceived notions they had on the typical hostility of monster-folk for so much as a second, the way these pig-men spoke and gesticulated and danced with one another around the fire would seem to be the nature of a more jovial people. It played to Ahnu’s favor that they couldn’t make out any sensible meaning behind the erratic squeals and grunts, seeing how just witnessing them behave in a fairly congenial manner with one another was already starting to make Ahnu feel strange about the eventuality of wiping the monsters out in their sleep. They didn’t want any more reason to hesitate than they already had, and hearing the things talk amongst each other—even if it was an indecipherable speech—was just one more unsettling comparison to actual people. 

Ahnu really didn’t want to go down the rabbit hole of reassessing how they felt about monster-kind. Ever since they’d woken up, they felt a sort of innate, perhaps even subliminal aversion to the things, which was a fair enough experience amongst Hylians, they figured. On top of that though, there was the overwhelming, violent abhorrence that practically consumed them the first time they’d laid their eyes on a Bokoblin. The feeling didn’t last long, but it certainly did give way to an overall nasty impression nonetheless, and it didn’t serve in the monster’s favor that Ahnu had possessed affirmation in the from of luminary guidance that, though impartial on the emotional aspect of how Ahnu interacted with monsters, instructed them on how to dispatch them from time to time. 

Really though, it hadn’t been since the Great Plateau that any useful behest was given on the part of the voices, which as is, have been terribly quiet as of late. Ahnu had taken to referring to them as the Assailant, the Academic, and the Archer, respective to the order in which the voices had first manifested in their head (truly, they came up with archer first, and wanted the other titles they endowed to follow in alliteration, so they put some real thought into it). The Assailant was the one who told them how to fight when they’d first woken up, and were for all intents and purposes, newborn to the world—though now she just seemed to criticize them from time to time. The Academic—the only still useful voice in their head—just enlightened them about the identity, and sometimes nature of certain objects or creatures, but usually just monsters since those were usually the only sorts of things that Slate couldn’t tell Ahnu about. That was the most recently active entity, having last spoken up in Deya regarding the special type of Talus there. She seemed to be the most upbeat. The Archer was, well, kind of obvious. He’d only instructed them on their archery twice. They haven’t heard from him since the Great Plateau. 

It was probably silly to endow significance and regard to the voices in their head, and certainly a little crazy considering that most people probably didn’t experience vivid auditory, visual, and sometimes even tactile hallucinations, but if this was going to be a running issue with them, they’d long since settled to get accustomed to the situation. Naming the strange entities certainly helped. Or at least, they’d like to  _ think _ it did. 

Ahnu was so caught up in their train of thought, they hadn’t even noticed that the Bokoblins sitting next to them had long since vacated their positions until they heard distinctly Hylian yelling. Apparently while Ahnu was caught in their reverie, prompted by how boring and simultaneously conflictingly mundane the Bokoblins were behaving when they weren’t trying to kill someone, the monsters had caught sight of a passerby a couple dozen meters away on the trail, and decided to do just that. 

_ “Pay. Attention.” came that cool voice in a stern and maybe even frustrated tone, both words punctuated by a soft jab to their forehead by two fingers of a gloved hand connected to an arm covered in wrappings, the gleam of a golden bangle visible from in between, just on the wrist. “Bokoblins aren’t exactly quiet. How did you manage to lose track of them? Or is this about earlier?” she asked, before dismissing the subject altogether. “They’re monster’s. They aren’t nice.” she chided for the upteenth time.  _

Grumbling, Ahnu stood up while rubbing their forehead. It was never pleasant when they were being touched by the voices, and when they talked for an extended period of time it gave Ahnu a bad headache. This is why they’d especially come to be annoyed with the Assailant, who seemed to be particularly fond of nagging Ahnu. Granted, most of the time Ahnu couldn’t hear a thing the voices said, as they amounted to no more than whispers in their head that could easily be obscured by a passing thought, but still. 

Pulling up the Slate to look at their weapons menu, they put away their sledgehammer and pulled out their Knight’s Claymore, weighing it in their hands before looking at the group of Bokoblins as the pig-men began to chase and terrorize a screaming Hylian that carried a few ridiculously oversized bags. 

Well, at least that made the decision Ahnu had been mulling over for the entire night an easy one. 

* * *

“That was just, so amazing man!” Giro remarked for the umpteenth time as he pitched his own canvas tarp. It was early in the morning, but the blonde, larger young man ran on a nocturnal sleep schedule. “I can’t believe you took out all of them! And that was smart, dragging the gold one over to the river and tossing em’ in. Those ones are a pain.”

Ahnu nodded along while fiddling with the feathered fletchings of their arrow, sort of catching the gist of what he was saying. They’d only just seen a golden Bokoblin for the first time yesterday, but they’d innately felt it to be strong, just like how the black ones were to the blue ones, or the silver to the black. They didn’t question the reason behind the range of diverse monster sub-categories, as they weren’t particularly bothered by how things were, so much as they wanted to know how things worked. Thinking about the potential intricacies of the tier systems amongst monsters was a good distraction from how flushed they were getting behind their mask, still unused to being thanked and complemented in accolades. They continued to tug at the ends of their arrow awkwardly as Giro resumed. 

“You seriously saved my life. I swear, there never used to be that many monsters along the river, and I’ve only ever heard of a gold one up until now.” he said, tossing his three large bags under his tarp. Ahnu had correctly guessed him to be a merchant of sorts, what with just how much he carried. He plopped himself down in front of the fallen log he’d made camp next to, leaning against it and sighing. “Things are just getting worse and worse, you know?” he bemoaned, looking over at Ahnu for confirmation. They nodded along still, despite not quite getting what he was going on about. 

“Yeah.” he remarked a bit absently, looking over at his supplies. “I mean, I haven’t been a merchant for long, least’ not as long as some folks, but in the last seven years now, I’ve seen things change in ways you wouldn’t believe.”

“Oh?” Ahnu said aloud, mostly just to get Giro’s attention. ‘Change how? Like what?’ they signed as soon as he looked back to them. 

“You mean you haven’t noticed?” he asked, before rationalizing his own question away. “Well, you do look pretty young. You must be new to the whole ‘adventurer’ game, huh?” When Ahnu nodded yet again, he nodded along in kind, closing his eyes for a moment. 

“Well, word to the wise is that monsters are getting stronger.” he said, looking pretty calm about something decisively worrying. Ahnu tilted their head curiously at him. 

“Wha?” they asked aloud, before adding on ‘what does that mean?’ in hand-speak. 

“Well, I mean—” he started to clarify, “—it’s sorta always been the case, hasn’t it? Back when the whole Calamity thing happened, most Bokoblins and Moblins were red, Lizalfos were green, and the same could be said for any enemies really. They were all weaker then.”

‘Really?’ Ahnu sighed in a quick motion. They hadn’t seen any enemies of the like as of yet of their journey. This was news to them. Then again, so was everything. 

“Heh, you really are a greenhorn, aren’t you?” Giro chuckled some, before getting back on track. “Yeah, really. My grandma used to tell me how when she was a little girl, there were more low tier monsters than anything else. As she grew up though, that started to change.” He pulled one of his packs over to himself, opening it up and procuring two Swift Carrots. He held one out towards Ahnu. “Here. Consider it thanks for saving me. My stock guy grew them from seeds he got from Kakariko.” Ahnu flinched a bit at the mention of that village, which thankfully went unnoticed under their mask. Still, they gladly accepted his offering and shoved said mask to the side of their head, beginning to munch away as Giro resumed.

“She grew up in the time just past the ‘Burning Fields’ so things we’re just starting to settle down in her youth.” Giro said, trying to grant some clarity as to the scaling of time behind what he was saying. Unfortunately for him, his newest acquaintance was an amnesiac from 100 years ago that didn’t grow up in the world that he did, and couldn’t even remember their own if they tried. Ahnu didn’t know what the “Burning Fields” were, but deducted from context that it was probably some form of commonplace terminology in reference to a time period post-Calmaity. Just how long, they didn’t know, but assuming his grandmother was in her 80’s, they would guess maybe 20 or so years. 

“Monsters were all weaker then, and less numerous too. Nowadays you can’t go more than a kilometer without finding something that wants to put you in the ground.” Giro continued, chomping down into his own carrot and chewing a bit before swallowing. “Goldies didn’t exist back then, or at least if they did, they were about as rare as reds are now.” he added on. “You know, now that I think about it, I’ve never seen a red Bokoblin either. Least’ not in person. We’ve got archives back in the library of Hateno where I read all about em,’ but even as a kid, the monsters I saw lurking around the outskirts of the village were all blue or black.”

This was the second time they’d heard about Hateno, which they understood to be a major Hylian settlement. 

“I mean I’ve at least heard stories about the gold enemies popping up all over the place before today, but no one's said so much as a word about red one’s my entire life, save for talking about how no one talks about them anymore. Like right now.” The hefty man said, taking another big bite out of his carrot. “I guess times are just changing. They always have been, but now it’s just escalating to some sorta peak. We ARE getting close to the 100 year mark after all.” He didn’t have to specify what for. 

As interesting a subject as the upsurgence in monster activity and power was, Ahnu had the feeling that the conversation had run its course, if Giro focussing more on crunching his carrot than on speaking was anything to go by. He spoke so nonchalantly about something so disconcerting, practically bored by his own explanation. It made sense that someone who grew up in a world teeming with danger, living in the shadows of tragedy long passed would speak of the gradual rise of troubles in a manner no different than how they would the region’s climate, but Ahnu wasn’t sure if they would ever get used to it. 

“Oh yeah, by the way...” Giro spoke up again after a time, recapturing the attention of a very intrigued Ahnu, who was eager to hear anything else he had to say if it would be as interesting as before. “Did you like that carrot?” he asked. 

Ahnu was caught off guard by the non sequitur, but nodded nonetheless after they had a few seconds to process the question. The carrot was very good. 

“Want some more? I’ll sell em’ to you at a discount.” Giro said with a smile, decently assured that he’d hooked a sale by introducing them to his product as payment for saving his sorry butt earlier. “Promise they’re all just as good.”

After brief consideration, Ahnu decided to buy out his stock of the root vegetable.

* * *

Activating the Dueling Peaks Tower was relatively anticlimactic, not that such was a bad thing. There was no daunting urgency like last time, nor any sort of mystical and grand assignment of half-divine nature, which made for a comparatively pleasant experience. 

Not only was a decent portion of their Slate’s map restored, but the Slate regained yet another latent function—the Sheikah Sensor. 

That was a pretty exciting addition to their Slate’s applications, and after camping out on the Tower—which is admittedly the safest they’d ever felt sleeping somewhere that didn’t have a bed—they set out to test it. 

They did a lap around the tower twice to test the dowsing capabilities of the Slate, determining that the sensor was a direction oriented, proximity based detector. Though they imagined that there were Shrines in all directions, the Slate seemed keen on zoning in on a single one at a time, which was annoying in theory, but something of a relief when they actually gave it some thought. It was simple and to the point, directing them to the nearest accessible shrine instead of blaring in any which way they turned. 

The only real disappointment was that the sensor was currently insisting on them going towards the river trail between the Twin Peaks. Which they did not want to do. At all. 

It may be ridiculous, but they’ve been starting to fixate on the mountain pass as something of an impassable threshold. Realistically, when they stared it down, it was a simple and straightforward trek along the waters, but it was all just a preamble to what them taking this path signified. This was the path they were instructed to follow. This was where they were told they had to go, to end up somewhere they weren’t sure they wanted to be, to find someone they didn’t know, to be told what to do next. There was a level of commitment to venturing down the damned mountain trail, perceived or otherwise. 

Despite their confliction, the Slate’s sensor continued to beep, uncaring of their plight. 

They did another lap on the Tower’s perimeter, uselessly hoping for there to be some deliverance from their predicament in the form of another nearby Shrine. They grumbled some before sighing, resigned to doing something they REALLY didn’t want to. Pulling out their paraglider from their slate, they hopped from their perch on the Dueling Peaks Tower, down towards the mountain pass and drifted along the wind with only one thought on their mind.

_ ‘That Shrine better be close.’ _

* * *

And it was. Soon enough, Ahnu had found themself at the platform of yet another shrine, right in the middle of the mountain pass. It’s relative elevation to the base of the mountains almost made them miss it, and had it not been for the orange that emanated from the ridge above their head reflecting onto the surrounding rocks, as well as the Slate’s sensor dropping off with the frequency of its beeping, they would have walked all the way through the sundered mountains only to come up empty handed. 

Another puzzle, another orb. There was little deviation from the routine, though that’s not to say the Shrine wasn’t special. Interestingly enough, the treasure this Shrine supplemented—as they always have something to offer, be it a weapon or gem or even an ancient part of some rarity—was incredibly unexpected. They’d never imagined that the old Monks of the ancient Shrines would provide them much in the way of attire, and yet here they were, walking up to the platform on which the Monk was preserved, wearing the very dapper Climbers Bandana that was left for them. 

At this point, they had pretty much settled on the theory that the old oblate’s couldn’t actually perceive the world around them. They sat as mere vessels, housing the last dregs of a soul they intended to give away to a stranger, numb to everything save the tampering of their shrine. Their line of communication was probably just a one-way street—they could impress meaning upon Ahnu, but otherwise, there was little else to be done about bridging the gap of notice. 

Still, Ahnu wanted to show their appreciation, and donned their newest cut of cloth immediately. 

As the Monk prattled off their mantra, Ahnu adjusted the red bandanna, fidgeting some with the tie they made. They didn’t want to interrupt the old mummy, so they rehearsed a string of different prayers beforehand, intent on making sure they had the chance to utter them in the presence of a mostly intact body. 

Looking through and past the Monk, Ahnu more felt then saw the endowment of the orb—that familiar pressure in their chest that came with subsuming the spirit of the one before them, and the fluttering behind their ribs as the soul calmed and settled in it’s new home. 

They raised a hand to their chest in awe, less caught off guard by the whole process now that they’d become so accustomed to it, getting used to the oddity that was the assimilation of someone else to their form but never quite prepared for just how intimate it all felt. They were brought out of their brief veneration by the beginnings of the blessing they knew would come.

_ “May the Goddess smile upon you.” _

Ahnu’s hand grasped at their doublet, the other at the bottom hem of their clothing, as they took in a quick, shaky inhale—

“And May she smile upon you, as well!” they said a bit too quickly, flustering where they stood. It felt as shallow and rehearsed as it was. It didn’t feel like it was enough. “And...” they added on, nearly at a loss for words as they witnessed the Monk begin to fade away into light and dust. 

Their hand unfurled from their chest, and reached up to their bandanna. 

“Thank you.” they stated simply, but with feeling. “Farewell.” 

This time, when they spoke in Sheikah, they did so deliberately. 

* * *

The sentimental mood they’d been in when they left the Shrine promptly dissipated as soon as they stepped off of the runic platform, which is when the incessant beeping of the Slate’s sensor started up again. 

Their first thought was to question whether or not the thing picked up on shrines already activated—which if so, was beyond stupid in design—but then they came to the logical conclusion that it had just picked up on yet another nearby Shrine. These things were really all over the place, weren’t they? 

Thankfully, the sensor didn’t drive Ahnu further down the mountain trail, but that’s all they could be thankful for, because frankly, they absolutely could not determine the direction of the damn thing. The Slate didn’t seem to like them going any which way at all, and they spent an embarrassing amount of time circling the shrine they’d just completed, unable for the life of themself to figure out what in hells domain was up with the Slate. 

That was when they remembered earlier, when they’d nearly missed the very Shrine they paced around on account of the fact that it was elevated and out of sight. With that in mind, Ahnu hopped down from the ridge, paraglider in hand, and soared over the rapids of the river below. When they landed on the opposite shore, they looked up, scouring the uneven and ragged surface of the rocky face of the mountain for some indication of a Sheikah structure. 

They couldn’t see anything on the mountain across from them due to the angle of ridges that served to obscure the peak of the smaller twin from their current position, but when they looked towards the upper half of the larger mountain, they noticed something on its face that was made more prominent in the shadow of it’s sibling and the dying light of the sunset. Orange.

The light of a Shrine, hidden on or at least near the top of the smaller of the two mountains, was faintly illuminating the surrounding rock as well as that of the rock wall that ran parallel to it. 

They smiled at their own observational prowess for a moment, happy to have figured out the location of the Shrine that was driving their Slate mad. Then they remembered that they actually had to get up there, and their good mood was soured.

They reluctantly pulled out their Slate and brought up their map, selecting the Tower they’d activated only the day before. 

They would sleep off the onslaught of exhaustion that came with teleporting, in addition to the far less strenuous events of the day gone by, and set out to climb the smaller mountain from the side less steep. 

* * *

Climbing the mountain was actually pretty fun. Ahnu had settled on taking the path of least resistance, climbing the nearby sets of plains that were divided by their relative elevation to one another. Sometime after noon, they’d wound up stumbling upon a GIANT Talus that turned out to be of the luminous denomination—something they’d only been able to determine after they’d slain the thing. 

They were still grumbling about shattering their sledgehammer on the rock beast’s ore deposit by the time it was night, when they’d found a camp of Bokoblins. Taking out the archer and the sleepers was a breeze compared to getting thrown off of a 10 meter tall boulder. 

Even after all of that, Ahnu hadn’t found themself particularly worn down. Charged and ready to keep going, Ahnu made their way a little bit further up the mountain before the very sky itself protested their continued activity and began pouring rain. 

The downpour caught Ahnu off-guard as they hadn’t exactly been keeping their eye on the weather application of the Slate. They stopped under a tree for a moment to pull it out and see how long the shower would last, and were disappointed when they saw that the slate projected the storm to go on well into the morning. They’d been on approach towards the steep portion of the mountain that would have led to the peak too—a feat now made unreasonably difficult by the rain. 

They huffed, looking around from beneath branches that began to droop under the weight of the water that beat down on them and clung to the leaves. They put up with three days of nonstop rain, constantly damp and itchy clothing, and unpleasantly cool temperatures all simultaneously over a week ago, and they were NOT willing to go through that again anytime soon. Luckily, they spotted what looked to be some wood wreckage just a short hike further up the mountain path. 

Sure enough, they found themself at the ruins of a single cabin on the end of the summit trail. After whatever terrible thing that happened to it went down, coupled with who knows how many decades of weathering, it was more a ragged wood pen with walls of inconsistent stature and feeble build. It was as if the roof were ripped clean off, taking most of the upper portions of the building with it. 

They’d initially guessed the wreck to have been some sort of lodge—likely public—for climbers or whoever happened upon the location in any manner whatsoever, but what they’d found inside made their assumption lean more towards a small natural research facility.

Along with some broken barrels and a crate of dust and mush—which they assume to have once been food stocks—they managed to find an old and oxidized copper box full of what looked to be graphs relating to yearly regional temperatures, precipitation charts, and seismic records. They existed in the form of soft stacks of thin parchment held together by rusted metal clips. The box did wonders to protect it’s contents from the elements, but the paper wasn’t the type made to last, and whatever bits of humidity and bacteria that seeped into its cracks over however long it’s remained forgotten certainly took a toll on its contents.

Realistically, the information on the delicate bundles of paper were the farthest thing from useful to Ahnu, save maybe as kindling. In practice however, Ahnu had a fixation on collecting all sorts of things and information no matter how useless, irrelevant, and unusual they were perceived to be. For the average Hylian, this might be indicative of a potentially serious hoarding disorder in the making, but for an amnesiac vagabond with the capacity to store more items than should be allowed in a convenient glowing rectangle, this was par for the course in their weird, month and a half long life. 

They placed the statistical records back in the box, carefully realigning the papers in their clips and organizing the stacks before sealing them away yet again and eventually convincing the Slate to dematerialize the entire thing. They also found a sledgehammer in the corner of the ramshackle mess that was once some sort of supply closet, so that was a nice replacement for the one they’d broken earlier. 

Having finished scouring the dilapidated mess of rotted wood on cracked stone foundation covered in dirt and organic decay from the extended lack of maintenance, Ahnu was starting to get sick of the rain. The noise of it calmed them, and the gloom it brought was more often than not a comfort, but it was cold up in the mountains and their current attire was not that meant to endure so much moisture and stay comfortable. The doublet was itchy even when it was dry. 

Their deliverance from the downpour came in a nearby overhang of stacked boulders, under which sat twin offering statues. Ahnu had paid little mind to the minor shrine when they’d first come upon the area, what with the decimated cabin attracting them more, and the fact that it’s not as if the statues would disappear if Ahnu didn’t pay them their immediate attention serving as reassurance. 

There was already a fresh apple sitting in the stone offering bowl or the left statue, and so Ahnu absently pulled an apple out of their Slate to give to the other, not even paying attention to the Korok that manifested shortly after as their attention had been almost immediately dragged away by an interesting kind of plant that grew around the statues. They’d collected three small bundles of Cool Safflina by the time the Korok had decided to poke them in the calf, startling them. 

Before long, Ahnu had laid out their canvas tarp next to the right statue, had shucked off all of their clothes to dry around the fire they’d started, and was sharing an apple with the tree spirit. They had to cut it into slices for the seed child to be able to fit bits of it below and under their leaf face, but Ahnu didn’t mind the extra labor that went into sharing the food, and were in fact way more interested in just what the Korok looked like under there (not that they would ask to see, as that seemed too intimate a question to ask a friendly stranger). The childling themself seemed happy enough to munch away at the fruit slices while teaching them about how to tell if different species of trees were healthy based on smell.

It was maybe an hour later, in the middle of the night, when Ahnu finally started to get tired. Their eyelids began to feel heavy and their focus on the one-way conversation they were having with their new forest friend was getting hazy. They procured a band of cloth from the pocket of their discarded pants, and absently went about tying their hair up in a top-head ponytail to keep the wet locks out of their face as they laid down. 

“Ooh!” the Korok exclaimed once Ahnu had gotten comfortable on the ground. “Pretty!”

Though still tired, Ahnu’s eyes shot open at the comment, not sure where it was directed. The potential compliment had them embarrassingly alert, and they immediately sat back up, head darting around the mouth of the alcove for some sort of rationale that absolved them of the praise. Had an animal wandered by, catching the eye of the Korok?

Evidently not, as the Korok had hopped into their lap, and reached up to one side of Ahnu’s head with their little arms. 

“You’re earrings are so glowey!” the Korok said, gently playing with the jewelry, before switching their attention to fiddle with the shell of Ahnu’s ear. “And your ear is a weird shape! Is the other one like that?” the Korok asked, not waiting for an answer before tilting Ahnu’s head to the side. 

“Oh! It is! Hee hee!” the Korok laughed as Ahnu put their hands under the seedling’s arms to hold them, gently moving the tree child away from their face. Were this any Hylian invading their personal space, Ahnu likely would have extricated themself from the situation the moment unwanted physical contact was established, but the demeanor of the Korok was inoffensive and innocently genial in nature, making the spirit much easier to tolerate in a social situation—just like a child. Though, if they were honest with themself, they just seemed to like Korok’s more than Hylians. 

Wait. Did the Korok just say their earrings were glowing?

Ahnu placed the Korok between them and the statue they sat beside and went to remove one of them. They’d only examined their earrings once, and it was the morning after they’d explored the coliseum. 

Sure enough, as they pulled the glass hoop away from their face, it was glowing a faint, but gorgeous teal. 

They handed it off to the Korok—who really wanted to examine it too—and removed their other earring, holding it between their index and thumb. As they stared down the ornament, the only thing on the forefront of their mind was just how similar the hue was to that of luminous stones. Pulling out one of the glowing gems from their Slate, they compared the two before handing the stone off to the Korok as well, who seemed to be drawing their own conclusions. 

In the daylight, their earrings were closer to a sky sort of color, and here at night, the glow was just a bit more blue than that of the luminous ore. Perhaps whoever made them mixed blue glass with crushed luminous stone powder before shaping them? Could the particulate of the stones still glow if it was crushed and super-heated, or would that dilute it’s luminescence? Maybe that was why the glow of the earrings was so faint, because it wasn’t just glass made with luminous sand as a base, but It was mixed with pigment and put through a furnace or kiln. It’s glow being so subdued certainly explained why they’d never noticed it any other night before now. 

They got their earring back from the Korok and put it back on along with the other one. They let the childling keep the luminous stone though, and listened to the Korok happily prattle on about how pretty it was as they laid back on their tarp and drifted off.

* * *

_ ‘5-1-2-4-1’ _

_ ‘5-1-2-4-1’ _

_ ‘5-1-2-4-1‘ _

Ahnu repeated the numbers over and over in their head, as they climbed the inner face of the taller twin mountain. They made it to the side of the summit where they rested briefly before mounting up for the final climb to the peak, where the other Shrine rested near. 

Initially, they’d been pretty confused when they entered the smaller twin’s shrine, which itself was on a ledge just below the peak. The first thing they saw when they entered was an engraved monument that read off some sort of strange poem in the basic Hylian script, no doubt some sort of vague instructive message that implied how the hells Ahnu was to complete the otherwise confusing Shrine. 

There were 25 equally spaced, circular indents in the ground, each of which had a receptive divot meant for one of the only five orbs present in the puzzle room. Without disturbing a single one of the orbs in their pre-designated pits, they walked around the various holes to examine them. Eventually, they ended up utilizing the raised platform that was present in the Shrine in order to get an aerial view of the entire thing. 

They settled on memorizing the placement of the orbs by denoting them with a numeral value of one through five, respective to where they were on each row from left to right, starting with classifying the top row and working down. That’s how they ended up repeating the numbers “5-1-2-4-1” in their head for the last six hours—from noon to near night—as they climbed the stupidly tall mountain. 

Sure, they probably could have just written the numbers down in their Slate’s note function, but that would have felt like cheating. 

All they could think of while climbing was how much they’d rather have had to climb to the top of the smaller twin in the rain 10 times over then be doing what they’re doing. Approaching the mountain peak from the west ledge was a terrible idea that they had been cursing themself for making ever since the first half hour of the grueling, practically vertical climb up—but due to the sunk cost of having already dedicated so much time to the path their foolhardiness put them on, they were ever more determined to ride out their horrible decision. They were wearing the bandanna they got from their most recently completed Shrine, and while they weren’t sure how much it was helping, they did at least get something of a morale boost out of it. They had also strapped their paraglider to their back as a precaution, in case they happened to lose their grip or improperly execute a knee bar—which never happened,  _ thank the gods. _ Ahnu didn’t know if they had it in them to try and climb the damn mountain again for at least another week if they fell off. 

They were sore, flustered but also freezing, and out of breath by the time they reached a low enough angle of incline on the rugged stone of the mountain that they could actually stand on. Yet somehow, they were also strangely invigorated, which probably had something to do with how accomplished they felt having successfully followed through on their objectively bad plan for how to climb the mountain. 

It was just a comparatively lax hike for maybe another hour before they finally reached the Shrine they’d spotted across the ravine. As much as they wanted to get it over and done with, Ahnu practically collapsed the moment they stepped onto the shrine’s platform. 

Though, after only a few minutes of blessed inactivity, a trio of Stalkoblins had to ruin it by climbing out of their graves of loose rock nearby, and making a beeline for Ahnu with paltry wooden weaponry in hand. Ahnu tossed each one of them off of the mountain. 

Sighing, Ahnu activated the Shrine, heading inside and down the lift—

And then they made camp in the corner near the elevator and went to sleep. 

* * *

_ ‘2-4-1-3-5’ _

_ ‘2-4-1-3-5' _

_ ‘2-4-1-3-5’ _

That was the new set of numbers Ahnu was repeating in their head, since that strategy for completing the Shrine on the taller twin of the sundered mountain hadn't failed them. They memorized the original position of the orbs in the same manner they did before, and then rearranged them to correspond to the pattern of the smaller mountain’s Shrine—which actually worked!

They hadn’t been too sure that they knew what they were doing, so it came as a pleasant surprise when their hackneyed plan for how to solve the puzzle they were presented proved sufficient. They expected that they would have to paraglide down to re-inspect the Shee Venath Shrine’s interior at least once more to figure out the actual solution, but that thankfully turned out to not be the case. 

Stepping out of the Shee Vaneer Shrine, they quickly climbed the last bit of the mountain to stand on it’s true peak. There, they found two offering statues (another Korok puzzle which they promptly solved) and a thin layer of soft frost that dusted the entire mountain top. A cold fog saturated the air, making it difficult to see too far out in any direction, which was unfortunate considering how excellent such a high altitude would have served for scouting the far perimeter of the sundered mountains. 

Instead, Ahnu looked to the North, or more specifically, down the edge of the mountain, at it’s shorter twin. It was from this angle that they finally took in how odd the two summits were. 

It was as if a god had taken a jagged blade and sawed a single mountain in half, faltering at every tug and slice, ending up with two mountains separated cleanly but in a manner most uneven, which would account for all the odd angles and large ridges one could walk upon. Though, perhaps some of what they saw could be held to the manufacturing of nature and people. Paths built along the differing levels of a mountain for elevated passage and mining, and strange bumps and divots with no puzzle-fit, inverse mirror on the opposite twin mountain as a result of water and wind erosion meeting the severed stone in different angles and intervals of intensity. 

They shrugged off their own suppositions, seeing how the speculations they made and imagery they conjured, though fun, were getting them nowhere. They looked back down the edge of the mountain, this time focusing on the Shrine that they’d activated, but never completed. Pulling out their Slate, they inspected their map and discovered that despite that fact, the warp gate was still an active option, which proved that activating the Shrine was all they needed to do to be able to teleport there. It was an interesting thing to notice, but not particularly useful in this case considering that Ahnu could just paraglide down to their current destination and save themself the trouble of fatigue. Also, paragliding was just more fun. 

They opened up their items menu and selected their paraglider just as they’d done dozens of times before now—the only big difference being that this time, a frigid North-bound wind ripped the glider out of their hand just as it manifested.

The wind was so strong, and came at such a shock, that Ahnu had to prioritize not tumbling over the edge of the mountain instead of their reflex to reach out and grip one of the wooden bowed holds of the paraglider.

The wave of panic that came over them after their brief brush with what would have been certain death subsided rather quickly, and instead Ahnu looked up from the mountain peak in total dismay as their paraglider was hazardously jerked around every which way by the wind. Miraculously, the contraption hadn’t yet broken, but it was already so far away and up high—only gaining more distance with each passing second—that Ahnu was sure they would never be able to tail it. 

Ahnu watched it flail in the harsh gust, certain that once they took their eyes off of it, they would never see it again. So they looked on, completely distraught and at a loss for what to do next—

When suddenly, the paraglider winked out of existence. 

Ahnu blinked. When the paraglider hadn’t come back into view, they blinked again, and then several times after that—all to to avail, as they regained no clarity with the action. 

At first they thought it must have drifted into a particularly dense cloud cover, which would have been the most reasonable answer. It had still been close enough for them to see rather clearly, so they hadn’t lost track of it due to the obscurity of distance or fog, and they certainly didn’t confuse it with a bird in their hassle with almost falling off the mountain. They briefly considered even the most ridiculous of scenarios, wherein an unbelievably strong gust of wind high up simply snatched it away from where they’d last seen it gliding so quickly that it became imperceptible for however long it took for it to get far away enough that they couldn’t see it in any direction they scoured. 

No, the real reason it disappeared was even more unrealistic—or at least unexpected—than that.

It took a Ahnu a solid ten minutes to finally stop staring up at the sky—whether they were waiting for their paraglider to materialize where it had disappeared or hopelessly expecting it to straight up return to them, they weren’t sure—and even then it was more so because their neck had started to cramp instead of them actually processing what had just transpired. To say that they were upset was an understatement. They brought their shoulders in close to their body as they hunched over like they were about to heave. They felt that usual pressure in their chest when they started to feel bad, like their lungs were being constricted while their heart beat frantically against the imagined binds, and their hands reached to tug on their doublet and grasp at their undershirt as if their could manually pry open their sternum to relieve some of that tightness that was becoming unbearable. Their stomach had long since felt like it dropped out of their body, and it left a static-like numbness in its wake. Panic seized their mind and their eyes began to sting and blur with water that went unshed, but made an unappreciated appearance nonetheless. They stepped back from the edge of the mountain to take a knee, then two, near the offering statues where a very confused and distressed Korok tried to offer them the two apples from the offering stone—the one it placed and the one Ahnu left—trying to help them feel better. 

It didn’t work. At least not at first. 

After a few minutes and a bit of coaxing, Ahnu managed to unfurl from where they’d bowed over and curled in on themself on the floor, instead assuming the position of sitting with their knees hugged tightly to their chest by a single arm, the other hanging limply to the side with a single, very bruised apple clenched in their hand. The Korok had at some point pulled out a tiny, red clay ocarina and began to play a cheerful tune that sounded kind of funny on account of how high pitched it was, but was decently composed and executed nonetheless. 

They’d finally started to resign themself to the loss of their glider and the unfortunate reality that they would be forced to climb down from every tall thing they scaled from then on. Of course, in the immediate, they could just teleport to the Shee Venath Shrine, but that was hardly a consolation in light of what just happened—after all, it wasn’t just about how difficult everything would be without the wood and cloth device. 

It was a simple enough construction that there wasn’t a doubt in their mind that they could have just made another with a bit of carved wood and tightly woven canvas that was inlined with something softer and denser, but that wasn’t the point—That paraglider was a gift from someone who was dead. 

It was a gift shrouded in the pretense of a life they couldn’t remember and a responsibility they didn’t want, but it was a gift nonetheless. Now it was gone.

The sickly feverishness Ahnu had felt in their panic had finally started to alleviate, giving way to the chilly air of the altitude with enough intensity to finally remind them that they didn’t like the cold. It was then that they’d made to pull out their tablet and remove their right glove in order to use the screen, intending to withdraw some wood and flint in order to start a fire—only to stop in their tracks when they finally noticed something strange on their wrist. 

It was something that had been there for several minutes actually, which they hadn’t noticed in their all-consuming distress. 

They looked at it, beyond confused as to how and when it had appeared. Missing the fact that they had earrings for a couple of weeks was one thing, but they were NOT so clueless and oblivious as to miss a bracelet on the wrist of their dominant hand for as long as they’ve been awake.

They inspected it carefully, very wary of the ornament as if it had been spontaneously placed there by a passing wind spirit that saw fit to curse them for the fun of it. It was a simple, polished wood bangle with a single strip of cloth attached to it and no exterior blemishes or carvings, though the same couldn’t be said for the inside of the bracelet. It was lined with runic swirls, particularly reminiscent of those on Sheikah architecture—specifically that of the warp gates. It was a strange comparison, but not nearly as odd as the single, engraved sentence:

For our [------], [--]

The first two words were in Sheikah script—albeit in a different font from that which they were accustomed to due to the characters being hand-carved—and the last was composed of only two blocky looking characters they couldn’t recognize at all. The word in between though, was in that wavy, curling script they recall seeing not too long ago. 

Ahnu pulled their Slate—which had since been dropped into their cross legged lap in their examination of the bracelet—up to their face, and opened their “Weapons” menu, selecting to withdraw the Saber they’d procured from a Hinox a few weeks ago. Once it manifested, they unsheathed it and immediately recognized the script to be the same, and in fact we’re able to find the very same word on the blade as they did on the engraving of the bracelet. 

Flower.

For our flower, [--]

There was an obvious affection to the words, and despite the fact that it was unclear specifically what those few words meant or who the message was directed towards, Ahnu reciprocated something resembling unfounded fondness in kind. They felt some stirrings of nostalgia in the back of their mind, as if they could  _ almost  _ recognize just what the words implied. Almost, but not quite. 

Shrugging off the emotions and stirrings in their mind they refused to further examine, Ahnu finally noticed maybe the strangest thing about the bracelet, which had to do with the cloth band sewn around the wood, tailing down about a dozen centimeters. Rotating the bangle around and looking at the strip of thick fabric, they made the most startling discovery about the wooden jewelry. 

The band was a predominantly maroon color, all sewn stitches being done in doubles, with an embroidered green stripe and a blocky yellow patterned lace near the bottom. What stuck out the most though, was the white crewel needlework of a heavily stylized bird. Ahnu absently brushed the small icon with their thumb, as if a tactile reading of the image would do further to ground the reality of their oncoming realization. 

It didn’t take them more than a moment to make the comparison. The band of cloth was embellished in the same manner as their—

In an instant, the bracelet disappeared in a teal flash, and what manifested in its stead was a contraption of wood and cloth. 

Their paraglider!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, it WAS given to them by a ghost. What would YOU have expected? For it to NOT be magical? Anyways, thanks for reading! Time to jump off a mountain!


	6. Chapter 6--  Starting to Feel Real

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After jumping off the smaller of the twin peaks, with only a slight interruption, Ahnu makes it to their second Stable. They start to interact with other people more, finding the company of others increasingly less unwelcome beyond just camping.

Was having an enchanted paraglider really the strangest thing to happen to Ahnu? It certainly wasn’t on the same magnitude of coincidence that had them find their heart-mask, as well the diaries of the deceased thief that stole it all within the span of a few weeks. It also wasn’t the strangest thing to exist within the world they’d seen thus far too, considering the existence of murderous machinations and monsters born from evil magic’s untold that roamed the lands in unfortunate abundance. 

Ahnu kept this in mind as they examined the paraglider closely yet again, inspecting it for any malformations, before tossing it off the peak of the small twin mountain for maybe the dozenth time. 

At first, they didn’t question the good grace that was their paraglider’s reappearance, but after handling the Shee Venath Shrine and having a good night's rest (their incredible mood absolutely being a result of their relief), they got curious. A short climb back to the top of the mountain later, and Ahnu ended up spending the rest of their morning pushing their luck by testing out the limits of their glider. 

So far, they managed to roughly work out how the enchantments of ownership worked, the most prominent rule the paraglider was bound by being that once it was a certain distance away from Ahnu, it would teleport back to them, reverting to the form of a bracelet on their right wrist, sometimes over their glove and sometimes under it. Ahnu figured out that it only took a mere thought for their paraglider to reassume it’s utilitarian form back on the taller twin peak, but what they discovered in addition was that they could also will it to change forms both in their possession as well as from a distance—which they did by throwing it off of the mountain while still in bracelet form and making it transition mid-fall. However interesting that quirk was, it wasn’t as interesting as the fact that Ahnu didn’t actually have to wait for their paraglider to fall or drift a certain distance away from them for it to be recalled, as they could wish it back to their side all the same. 

Decently happy with all the discoveries they’d made, Ahnu sat down on the summit to what would be an early lunch. It was after they’d swiped over from their “Material” category to the self-created file labeled “Food” that they made another discovery, albeit one that was less significant and more embarrassing. The menu held only two items in it, those being a single fairy tonic, and some salted mushroom rice balls—that if they recalled correctly they got from the patrolman and part time arrow-smith, Brigo, back at the Outskirts stable around a  _ month  _ ago. 

Ahnu knew well enough that the Slate could perfectly preserve anything deposited into it in a manner that would suggest that time couldn’t penetrate its screen and inner workings, if the warmth of the rice balls they withdrew were anything to go by. They hadn’t withdrawn anything from the tab since the Great Plateau, when the only complex dishes they had to store were cooked eggs and nuts wrapped in leaves, and had honestly forgotten about the menu ever since they’d visit their first stable. Ever since then, Ahnu mostly stuck to eating fruit and fire-grilled fish and roots, preferring freshly procured or quickly cooked meals over a campfire that didn’t take so much time to prepare. Maybe they should change that in the future. 

Chowing down on the rice balls in one hand, using the Slate’s scope in the other, Ahnu ate as they surveyed the North horizon and half of the mountain. It was a speck in the distance, but they could just barely make out the silhouette of what they believed to be the Castle. Definitely  _ not  _ wanting to acknowledge the edifice on any level beyond a simple observation, Ahnu’s eyes favored scanning the territory of everything between it and the mountain they sat upon. They also refused to look South, some portion of them wary of even catching sight of the village they wanted to avoid—at least for the time being (they kept telling themself).

Somewhere closer to them than the accursed sight, they spotted another speck in the distance through the magnifying lens of the Slate. Two somethings actually, which looked to be six—maybe seven—kilometers apart from each other, and both glowing orange. 

Ahnu shoved the last of their final rice ball into their mouth and began to plot out a route in their mind. 

* * *

So things didn’t work out exactly the way they planned, but that was partially Ahnu’s own fault. 

They’d initially planned to ride a very opportunistically timed North wind down to the Shrine they’d spotted more North-West of their starting point on the mountain, favoring it over ever so slightly closer and more wind oriented direction of the shrine that looked to rest on an isolated islet further up the river, due to the fact that it seemed to be near a small, man-made settlement—that though difficult to see from the distance they’d first observed it—they highly suspected to be a Stable. They remembered learning that there were many throughout Hyrule during their limited time at the one in the Outskirts. 

It turns out that fighting a Northbound wind, even at the slightest of angles, for a few hours was a tiring process that left them privy to a whole new kind of stiffness. It was during this extended glide that they experimented with their hold and position on the glider, eventually managing to bring their legs up to loop around the curious bar they’d previously thought as a superfluous fixture on the paraglider. 

They spent a fair amount of time upside down on the paraglider, which allowed them to rest their upper body and actually use their hands, which were currently occupied by the Slate as they stared down the marker they’d placed on the Shrine they were headed towards. The portion of the map that their destination was located on had yet to be restored, but since they could place markers via the scope instead of just the map, they were able to watch as the icon that indicated the Slate’s location grow closer to the red “zero” they’d placed when they were back on the mountain—which was good, considering that they had to face backwards in exchange for getting to be upside down on the paraglider. 

They’d passed over a forest with a shallow lake and what looked to be a Bokoblin tree camp in the center of it, which tempted Ahnu to drop down on the monsters—though not literally. Despite the fact that Ahnu could readily dismiss and re-manifest their paraglider at will, they weren’t going to push their luck any farther than they did earlier that morning, and they surely weren’t going to find out just how far they could fall and still catch themself starting at 100 meters. 

Unfortunately, a forest Octorok decided that Ahnu wouldn’t get that choice. 

As Ahnu was nearing the Shrine and Stable by a solid kilometer or two, the only major separation between them and their destination being the rapids of a river that appeared to be what divided the region of their map that they could see from what they couldn’t, a monster octopus from the forest took a potshot at them from 50 meters below, just as they were in the process of switching from being upside down to right side up, hitting them in the head. 

All they felt was a disorienting thud against their skull, and the next thing they knew, they were plummeting. 

They tensed, and their paraglider manifested in their hands, their fingers already looped through the leather holds. Ahnu caught themself maybe a dozen meters from the ground, which they collapsed to after landing in a heaving heap as their paraglider retracted to it's idle form on their wrist. They were on the shore of the river, their destination basically a distance across the waters. 

They took the near-death experience pretty well all things considered, only hyperventilating for a few minutes before they got up to their feet and ran back into the forest, in the opposite direction of where they’d initially set out to go, intending to kill every single Octorok in the damn woods. 

Now, they were idly foraging in a forest completely devoid of monsters, and had settled for camping out in the tree base the Bokoblins they’d seen earlier had occupied prior to Ahnu dispatching them as night fell. 

Had they been paying attention to their surroundings, and not hanging upside down on the paraglider, they would be sleeping in an actual bed instead of a pile of pelts from animals the Bokoblins had inexpertly tanned and accumulated during their dominion over the forest. Did that mean that Ahnu would never hang upside down on their paraglider ever again? Absolutely not. 

_ “Wreckless” her even tempered voice would chide them again and again and again, never seeming to let up.  _

Ahnu shook their head, trying and failing to get the ever so annoying voice of the Assailant out of their head, and bemoaning how they would have to go the rest of the night with a slight headache for their troubles. They groaned as they organized the tree-camp to their liking, kicking useless scraps of trash and bones picked clean down to the ground below. 

It was actually when Ahnu was gathering the aforementioned pelts into a pile that they decided to look over the only nearby subjects of interest, seeing how nothing other than animals roamed the trees and drank from the proximate lake now. There was a large, hollowed stump—which wasn’t anything new to them—as well as a few spread out metal crates littered around and even inside of it. Most interesting though, was yet another of those strange towers they’d found all over the lands they’d tred thus far. 

They found a couple of them back on the Great Plateau, but hadn’t thought much of them. Of course, Ahnu impulsively climbed them back then, out of nothing more than ignorance born curiosity, seeing how this was before they were officially “reassigned” to their divine task. The experience of finding treasure atop that first stone pillar when they knew next to nothing (though that could still be said about them) had successfully conditioned them to climb every single one of the towers they found, which always resulted in them walking away with a new weapon, set of arrows, or precious gem added to their slate. 

They’d never bothered examining them all too closely, and they probably weren’t going to start now. Regardless, the column they were eyeing was one they hadn’t climbed yet, having been too busy taking care of the Bokoblins to bother. Ahnu tossed the last of the animal hides into the mound they’d amassed, and jumped down from the platform built around a tree. 

With the assistance of a few of those metal crate stacked on top of each other, Ahnu was able to climb the tower with ease, but as they made it to the upper ledge and were ready to bound over the rim at the top that would have put them on the flat of the tower, they focused in on something unusual. Hanging from the edge of the pillar, they examined one of the six faces that made up the column’s angled rise. Unlike the rest of the stone, the upmost portion of these towers weren’t just giant hexagonal brick stacked atop one another, but an enlarged sort of platform, the six sides of which were engraved with a design that Ahnu could have sworn they’d seen somewhere before—very recently—but they just couldn’t recall where. 

They shimmied around the edge of the entire tower, examining all six facings that bore the same intricate design, but in differing states of dilapidation on account of extensive weathering and high moss growth. Even when they found the design that suffered the least of these afflictions, they still couldn’t quite remember where they’d seen such engravings. 

Shrugging it off, Ahnu hauled themself up to the top of the tower, collected it’s offering, and paraglided back down to the tree-base they superseded to turn in for the night. 

* * *

Admittedly, Ahnu got a tad sidetracked. 

It was maybe just after noon that they broke back out of the tree line on the North-Eastern end of the forest. They were foraging along the overgrown path that trailed through it, fully intending to turn North to cross the river and head to the Shrine and Stable at some point—when they found themself out of the woods and arguably closer to the islet Shrine. 

At a distance they could see a wooden bridge that crossed the river, which was a more appealing option for transit than their original plan of hopping ice pillars across the fast moving waters, even if there were floating monster platforms on either side of it. They’d started towards the bridge at a relatively leisurely pace when they heard shrieking coming from their very destination, which pushed them into a full on sprint. 

Zoning in of the area of dispute, Ahnu could make out a Hylian being chased around by a lone Bokoblin as a pair of Lizalfos seemed to cheer it on from the floating platforms above the waters. Pulling out their soldier’s bow as they neared the planks that connected to the shore, Ahnu slowed their pace to quickly take out both of the lizard monsters before resuming their previous gait towards the swine that had it’s back to them. The Bokoblin, which had just knocked the poor Hylian unconscious, darted it’s head from left to right, and was too busy questioning where it’s entourage had gone to turn around towards the incoming footsteps of Ahnu, who leapt over the collapsed civilian to tackle the pig monster to the ground. The Bokoblin was too winded to so much at struggle before Ahnu plunged a Soldier’s Claymore into the middle of it's sternum with enough force to imbed the blade several centimeters into the wood below. 

After the monster had dissipated, they made their way back over to the Hylian, who had managed to get back up on their feet, which relieved Ahnu immensely. The stranger was only knocked out for half a minute, which meant they probably had something of a concussion, but likely suffered no severe damage. Still, the stride of the Hylian as they attempted to make it to their feet was a bit wonky, so Ahnu decided to assist them.

They weren’t particularly comfortable with touching a stranger, but considering the duress of the situation, it was something of a necessity if they were to be of any help to the clearly disoriented Hylian. They sighed, and de-manifested their weapons from their back and into their Slate as they watched the stranger attempt to walk off their injury, feeling all the more uncomfortable without them. They kept out their shield and removed their baldric belt, which they quickly placed on the wobbling stranger to offer some form of protection to the otherwise barren individual. 

Reluctantly, as the Hylian they’d just adorned stared at them in a dazed confusion, they knelt to the ground and gestured to their back. 

* * *

Leekah, who was insistent that she didn’t need to be carried, but wobbled around and felt faint after traversing a couple dozen meters on her own two feet, embarrassingly mumbled both her thanks and apologies as Ahnu hauled her back to the Stable she was staying at. Her guilt at being a burden was lessened some by her savior insisting that they were heading that direction anyway, and that she wasn’t at all heavy to them—which hey, what a compliment! Still though, a four hour trek at the brisk pace her hero set with her on their back? She doubted that they could manage that at first, but when she dozed off about half an hour into being carried and woke up in a bed, all she could think about was what a machine of a person that Hylian was—but not like, the murdery kind. 

* * *

Ahnu had just returned from the Shrine after sunset, having dropped off Leekah at the Riverside Stable to be tended to by a Stable hand named Gotter, decently assured that she would be in good hands until they came back to check on her. To their pleasant surprise, she was awake and nursing a headache around the fire of the Stable’s cooking pot, wrapped up in a blanket and sipping at some soup the kind and portly man had given her, also offering a serving to Ahnu when they joined the two to sit near the flames. 

“It’s so fortunate that you brought this poor trouble-maker back to our Stable!” Gotter joked as Ahnu tilted back the bowl of broth he’d given them. It was a very tasty egg-drop soup, which they gladly slurped up. 

“Uugh!” Leekah exclaimed, exaggerating her annoyance. “What’s so wrong with wanting a change of scenery! Can’t a girl look at the river in peace!” she went on, pulling her own blanket further up her shoulders as she curled in on herself, trying to retract her head into the soft cotton and disappear. 

“Nothing, nothing!” the middle-aged man laughed, waving his hand about as if to dismiss the insinuation. “Maybe just be a bit more careful when you’re heading to the next stable. It may just be a day’s hike away, but you should still be careful!” Gotter chastised lightly, his words lost on the bundle of blanket that draped the Hylian girl. 

“You were very lucky this traveler came along!” He said gesturing to Ahnu, who had since finished their soup. Gotter looked at them and their empty bowl, beaming with pride after he noticed that not a dreg of the soup he’d offered remained. “Aha! Yet another lover of my cooking!” he happily proclaimed. “Would you like some more?” he asked Ahnu, who nodded enthusiastically.

“Oh, who doesn’t love Gotter’s cooking!” proclaimed another Hylian—a weapons enthusiast named Parcy—as she strode over to the group, sitting down on the seat next to Ahnu with her own bowl clutched in her hands. Gotter took it from her after handing Ahnu their second serving, gladly filling it with plenty of his homemade broth from the wok. “This is the reason I don’t live at any other stable!” she added with a pleasant sigh after taking a whiff of the soup. Ahnu could relate, having nearly finished up their second bowl. 

“Oh you flatterer, you!” Gotter said, his sweet smile spreading even further, making deep set dimples become even more prominent on his big cheeks. “I’m happy to provide!” he said, before signing dreamily. “Now, could you imagine what I could do with a cookbook from the Castle’s library? Oh, that would be the day.” he added on, dramatically bringing his hand up to his head as he tilted backwards lightly in a mock-faint gesture. 

“Who needs a grotting book when we have you, Gotter!” Parcy laughed in between her sips of the soup. “You’re an amazing cook with a lifetime of experience under your belt!” she encouraged. “But I’ll tell you what! One of these days, when I break into Hyrule Castle to nab some royal gear, I’ll grab you a cookbook or two if you’ll let me be your taste-testing guinea pig!”

“It’s a deal.” Gotter replied to the offer, as he happily snatched up Ahnu and Parcy’s bowl to refill them. 

Ahnu spent the rest of the night listening to the two Hylians have a charming back and forth about cake and royal guard weaponry, before everyone turned in for the night. They gnawed idly on some sugarcane Leekah had given them as thanks for saving her, mulling over the day for a bit while they worked their teeth on the fibers of the sweet stalk. As they began to fall asleep in a very good mood, likely on account of a stomach full of delicious food and a soft bed beneath them, they couldn’t help but think about how nice it was to be around other people sometimes. 

* * *

The Stable goers had called it the Bottomless Sog, a mess of gargantuan bones and the stone carved skull that monsters liked to house in, all covered in various layers and pools of  _ malice _ . 

Ahnu called it a waste of time not worth exploring when there happened to be a Shrine in the middle of the nearby river. Also, they just didn’t want to go there, so they didn’t. 

Instead, they Cryonis-hopped over to the small island, where they jogged around the rows of flowers growing around the Shrine in it’s center, much to the appreciation of a Hylian woman named Magda. She even offered Ahnu a crown of dandelions as thanks for respecting the hard work that went into planting all the flowers around the Shrine, citing them as “pretty weeds that needed to be torn out of the ground anyways.” She also said they made for a pleasant brew of tea, which she made for Ahnu before directing them towards the “Wetlands Stable.”

Ahnu crossed to the other side of the rapids Magda dubbed the “Hylia River” and wound up traveling near it’s shore, through the tall grasses of the adjacent plain, picking up the occasional hightail lizard as they hiked. It was sunset when they saw the overgrown Guardian the flower fanatic mentioned in her directions. 

_ “If you see one of those mean old urns with a couple of legs ripped out and a bunch of vines creeping all up it, you're on the right track! You should be able to see an actual path off in the distance, and that’ll lead to the next Stable.” _

It was nice of her directions to account for Ahnu traveling a diagonal, uncharted trail as opposed to insisting that they stick to designated roads, like most other travelers do. 

They were planning to walk past the Guardian-promoted-to-minor-landmark without stopping, or getting near it for that matter, but a pair of soft, pink lights dancing around it’s mossy head distracted Ahnu for long enough that they didn’t notice the severed legs of the machine hiding in the grass until they’d already tripped over one. 

Ahnu flushed in frustration and embarrassment for a moment, before sighing and getting up to their feet and collecting the few arrows that were flung out of their quiver in their fall. Looking over the segmented appendage they’d taken a tumble over, they noticed another a short distance away. Both were a couple dozen meters away from the machine that they belonged to, making Ahnu briefly wonder what the hells could have happened to it. 

Brushing off the useless queries, Ahnu zoned in on the pink balls of light that fluttered about the Guardian’s body, occasionally bumping into one another. They crouched over to the two, and had only just realized what they were as they gently reached up to cup one in their hands. 

Much to their dismay, the fairy promptly disappeared from their hands in a flash of blue. 

Yanking their Slate off of their hip, they quickly opened their Materials menu and selected the newest addition that was the little fae, freeing them from the confines of the Slate. They began to profusely sign their apologies, only to be met with a soft, tingly sort of laughter that almost reminded them of the jingle of a bell. 

Apparently, if a person catches a fairy, then that fairy owes that person a single favor, and is obligated to assist them in any way requested. This usually occurs in the form of magical aid in healing, potion making, and even cooking—which explained the fairy tonic that Ahnu had received over a month ago. The fairy seemed to think that Ahnu’s ignorance of this fact was cute, and allowed Ahnu to catch them again, stating that the inside of the Slate was “Neat in a precarious sort of way. Much cooler than a glass bottle.”

Ahnu, relieved at this revelation, also scooped up the first fairy’s friend, who at this point had been spectating the incident and laughing along. They also seemed pretty enthusiastic about seeing what the inside of the Slate looked like, so no harm done. Happy that they didn’t actually kidnap a fae, and were instead taking part in some weird sort of ancient game the fairies play, Ahnu set about making their way forward, also glad that they could leave the husk of a Guardian behind. 

In the distance, they spotted the more familiar glow of what Ahnu was sure to be a fire. In the almost-night, when the transition of day to dusk was in the process of completing itself, the animals and bugs that roamed in the daytime were settling down to sleep, and those that roamed the dark had yet to wake, all they could hear was the sound of the wind that brushed their ears and made the grass undulate like water. 

Also screaming. They could hear screaming. 

* * *

“Food’s almost done!” Tye said, stoking the fire with a metal poker and adjusting the angles of the half-dozen sticks that were sticking out of the ground near the flames, trying to account for the added heat that a change of direction in wind provided to the grilling fish and mushrooms. 

Ahnu was busy examining the particulate floating about behind the glass of the electro elixir the couple had given them as thanks for rescuing them from a few Bokoblins that had chased them to the edge of the forest they now set up camp just outside of. Saving random people from monsters seemed to have become a running pattern for Ahnu. 

Ahnu had communicated that a meal in addition to the minor elixir the two had given them was unnecessary, but the pair had insisted on the hospitality. Now, Ahnu was listening intently to the lesson Sorelia was giving them on how to make potions and the like, specifically how to temper them properly. Evidently, she had a knack for making them, though hers were typically only ever made from monster parts of the lowest caliber, as the two Hylians could only ever manage to take out the odd group of Stalkoblins or the single blue Bokoblin. Not only did Ahnu learn how to make elixirs, but they also learned that it was relatively uncommon for a single individual to regularly and successfully down multiple high-risk enemies. All interesting information. Also interesting was the story the couple divulged as all three of them sat down around the fire for dinner. 

“-I intended to set out on my own, but Sorelia would have none of it and insisted on coming along.” Tye recalled the beginning of the two’s journey to Ahnu, fondly looking over to his wife. 

“And you know I’m always happy just to be together with you.” she replied just as warmly. “Though I always hope I’m never too much of a burden on my husband, what with my insisting I accompany him on this trek.” 

“Never.” the man said assuredly with a smile, before breaking out in a laugh. “Besides, I’m almost certain I would have dropped dead months ago without your elixirs and potions to boost me up!” he humbly joked, which garnered a laugh from his significant other. 

Ahnu observed the very much in love couple, regarding their casual affection for one-another with a pleasant sort of indifference. They were honestly far more interested in the subject of conversation than the tangential reverence of the pair, but Ahnu wasn’t so inconsiderate as to interrupt them. It was only when the two resumed eating that Ahnu waved to get the attention of either of them. 

‘What is so special about this flower?’ Ahnu signed their question to the two. ‘Silent Princess.’ they added on for clarification, albeit redundantly. 

“Oh!” Sorelia exclaimed, evidently excited to talk in detail about the flower that she and her husband had only mentioned in passing when citing the motivation for their travels. “We read about it back in the Hateno library when we were just kids, before we ever even thought about marriage and love and all that junk—” she said with a wave of the hand, as if she were brushing off a slightly embarrassing memory.

“Yeah, back when you said you’d never marry anyone.” Tye teased, which got him a playfully indignant gasp and a light smack on the forearm. 

“Hush, you!” Sorelia said in a tone completely devoid of any irritation, before she looked back to Ahnu to resume. “As I was saying, before SOMEONE so rudely interrupted me—“ she said, side-eying a snickering Tye, “We read stories—fables and even first hand accounts—about how courting or married couples that declare their love to one another in front of a silent princess, and then pluck it together, are destined to remain happy and in love for the rest of their lives.”

“As you can imagine, people nowadays are pretty desperate for any assurance of a prosperous future.” Tye said a tad morosely, his smile looking a bit sadder. His wife looked over to him, reciprocating his sudden melancholy, before switching the hand that held her kebab and reaching over to interlace her fingers with his where they remained idle on the fallen log they both sat on. 

‘Why?’ Ahnu asked, tilting their head some. The question got both Tye’s and Sorelia’s eyes on them. Their scrutiny, however brief and inoffensive, made Ahnu want to put their mask back on. Fortunately, the couple broke the eye contact soon enough, instead looking at each other seriously, as if communicating something silently and without gestures that went beyond a flick of the pupil or a blink that was a bit too long to be natural, seemingly contemplative in nature. Finally, Sorelia’s eyes went back to Ahnu, though her head and body remained mostly oriented in the direction of her husband. 

“I’m guessing you’re at least not from Hateno, since it’s all our village has been talking about for the past couple of years.” she said, her words sounding wary in their vagueness. “Especially ever since a month and a half ago.”

That rough timeline gave Ahnu some impression of where this conversation was going, and it was one that made them regret asking the first question that led to the potential subject at hand now. This was not worth learning about a flower. 

“Everyone says the world’s going to change soon.” Tye relayed, his statement prompted by where his wife was taking the conversation. “For better or for worse, no one knows.”

“Ever since those Towers popped up all over the place, and the old Shrines around the land suddenly lit up after being inactive for countless lifetimes—or at least that’s what the elders back home said.” Sorelia added on. “We were actually visiting Hateno, taking a break from our journey to go back to our village and house shop, you know, for our future together.” She said, looking into the fire somewhat impassively, her smile looking almost lifeless until her husband squeezed her hand, which allowed for some genuine emotion to seep through her face, albeit an emotion more resembling sadness. 

“That’s when we saw it.“ Tye said, picking up the conversation on behalf of his wife. “The Shrine came to life—the very same color as this here fire—” he jabbed the kindling in demonstration, “—right before our eyes. Well, us and the construction contractors who were giving us a tour of their modern model homes. The boss of the crew actually sent one of his workers down to spread the word throughout the town.” 

“Later on, it was actually a couple of village kids that noticed the Tower nearest to the village. Soon enough, we had a couple of travelers that had evidently booked it to Hateno as fast as they could, some sharing news and updates between towns and stables, others wanting to seek refuge or settle down and take a break from wandering the lands in light of recent events.” Tye took the last mushroom on his stick into his mouth, chewing and swallowing before tossing it and the skewered fish—mostly just bones with bits of hard to get at meat—into the fire. 

“One merchant on horseback who was near the tower when it happened said that the tremors that preceded its rise spooked her horse so badly that it threw her off.” Ahnu’s brows furrowed, their face slightly pinching in concern, which Tye caught onto pretty quickly. “Oh, don’t worry, she was treated when she got to Hateno. Her shoulder was only dislocated, and one of the doctors were able to get it back into place with ease. She and her horse are fine, last we saw them.” he kindly reassured. “But still, I mean we didn’t even feel so much as an aftershock back in the village, and that tower was relatively nearby. How much else could be happening across Hyrule that we don’t know about?” he asked, his question catching on the cool breeze, which seemed to be the only entity with an answer—even if it was just an unintelligible, soft howl. 

His query, though mostly rhetorical, did happen to strike a chord in his wife however, who seemed to snap out of her trance. She looked up to her husband, that beaming defiance of hers that he loved practically glowing on her face like the firelight was. 

“So what?” she replied. “So what if the world wants to end in three years! I’m not gonna let it!” She declared, gripping her husband’s hand with a renewed fervor, bringing it up to hold in the moonlight for Ahnu to see. 

“We’re going to find our flower before then! And when we do, we’re going to be happy and together forever. I wouldn’t be very happy if the world ended, so the promise of the silent princess won’t let it!“ she said, so completely, absolutely sure of herself. 

It was silly, what Ahnu was witnessing, but at the same time, so incredibly charming. Evidently, Tye thought the same, as he looked at her just as dumbfounded as Ahnu, before his own beaming smile returned, and he embraced his wife. Ahnu almost felt like they were intruding on a tender moment between two people who absolutely adored each other. 

Eventually, the two broke apart, still holding hands more out of a desire to be close than to comfort, and in much better spirits. 

“So yeah, we’re back on our journey to find the silent princess to save the world, but more importantly, to stay together! Sorelia joked, earning a laugh from her husband, which made her own mirth all the more encompassing. 

“Now no more sad talk!” She commanded, both to her husband AND Ahnu. “I know, why don’t we talk about something fun, huh?” she offered, before asking, “What’s your favorite flower, Ahnu?”

Ahnu was still processing their whiplash from the jump of sullen to exuberant the conversation took, that they needed a moment just to realize that they’d never even bothered to think of things, especially flowers, in terms of “favorite.” They looked around themself in a manner akin to someone who’s been accused of something as opposed to a person asked what their favorite bit of flora was; to say their floundering was comical was an understatement. Sorelia was about to ask them what was wrong when they spotted it, just behind their tent. 

The soft blue glow of the beautiful bulbs that emanated a wonderfully sweet scent that had more in common with sugar than the floral kind of fragrance. They’d first found some back on the Great Plateau, and even more growing around the basin of what used to be Deya. They always transfixed Ahnu, but they never happened to be in a good enough mood to really appreciate the flowers. 

They got up from their spot near the fire, across from the married couple, who watched them dart behind the meager tent they’d set up with confusion. It was when Ahnu emerged from behind the obstruction of the pitched tarp did they realize what Ahnu was getting at, seeing them holding the glowing flowers. 

“Blue Nightshade!” Tye exclaimed. “Those used to be my favorite too, until I read about the silent princess that is.”

“They really are such a gorgeous flower!” Sorelia added on. “That beautiful bioluminescence! That sickly sweet aroma! They’re edible too, you know. Those round little flowers are packed full of nectar that bursts like a bubble in your mouth.” she said, pointing to one of the bulbs. 

Ahnu’s eyes widened at that. They hadn’t even realized that they could just eat flowers—aside from the dandelion buds they plucked off of the crown they were given by Magda earlier, which they ate before disposing of the wilting greenery, but that’s different. Those are good for digestion. 

They popped a bulb into their mouth, and were very pleasantly surprised by just how much they liked the taste. The sugarcane that they got from Leekah was good and refreshing in its sweetness, but in a very basic and uninfluenced sort of way (though admittedly that didn’t stop them from sucking out all it’s juices). However the nectar of the bulb had a unique and more natural sort of profile, though not in the overbearing way that honey did, and that made it much more desirable in both flavor and texture, being smooth and cool on the tongue with a pleasant aftertaste to boot. 

The married couple laughed at Ahnu’s antics, much to their confusion, and gladly partook in the offering of blue nightshade bulbs. Ahnu may not have been a young child, but the way their eyes lit up at the little revelation of just how good the nectar is, and how eager they were to share the sweet little flowers was certainly reminiscent of one to the married pair. 

Sorelia probably shouldn’t have given Ahnu a lease on the notion of eating flowers though, because that would be something they would regret heavily when they get around to eating a swift violet—and they  _ will  _ eventually eat a swift violet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww, they're socializing. They might not be the best at it, but at least they're starting to get that the point of being around others is to enjoy it. Next chapter, next Stable! Rapid fire, babes! Thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter 7--  Blood Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu winds up at yet another Stable, where they encounter a strange individual, take up a quick job on a half-minded whim, befriend a dog, and witness one of the most terrible things the sky above the land of Hyrule has to offer.

Ahnu lost track of time while foraging, fishing, and hunting. This is starting to happen all the time, so it didn’t come as a surprise to them when they were hit with the realization that they’d spent two solid days mingling between the river shore and the surprisingly lush little forest. At some point, they had to turn off their Sheikah Sensor, because the Slate would NOT stop blaring every few seconds, alerting the game they were hunting. That’s probably why the real shock came when they were suddenly face-to-back of a Stable, as well at the Shrine that was but a hop, skip, and jump away. 

Instead of the beeping of the sensor having led them to the destination, it was actually the distant tune of what must have been some sort of instrument. Ahnu figured it had to be a traveler of some sort, but personally thought it was rather stupid to be making so much noise in a potentially isolated and dangerous area—though Ahnu knew the woods to possess little more than boar, deer, and mushrooms, that was all besides the point. Granted, the fact that the noise came from the relatively secure location that was a Stable made a lot more sense than some foolhardy musician that traveled around making a potentially dangerous racket that could attract all kinds of monsters.

Approaching what would have been their third night in the woods, Ahnu elected to handle the Shrine in the morning, heading around to the front of the tented-structure, intent on renting a bed. They’d rounded some crates that were spread out along the side of the Stable, their stride more relaxed in the warm air that seemed to waft out from the place’s many fires and torches. They reached up to their face, occupied by the same mask they wore intermittently, and hooked their fingers over the upper rim of the thing where decorative spikes didn’t occupy the space. People tended to react better to Ahnu when their face wasn’t obscured by such an eyesore, and by better it’s meant that they didn't really react at all. Ahnu is just another passing face worthy of little note or attention, which is just how they like it.

It was actually thanks to that little sentiment of theirs that their very shocked expression was on display for the world when they came within meters of something that was quite the spectacle—rather, _someone_. 

Ahnu darted behind the stack of crates and supplies held together by a tarp spiked into the ground, peeking out from its side to look at who was undoubtedly the source of the noise, their feathered hands holding what looked to be a box they were squeezing at set intervals, all the while tapping away at buttons that changed the thing’s tone. Ahnu searched their head for a moment before coming up with the word “accordion.”

The instrument wasn’t nearly as eye catching as the musician though, the stature and general appearance of them being the sole reason that gave Ahnu pause. There was no hostility in Ahnu’s shock, which would be a very unconvincing statement to make to anyone that were to observe them hiding away from the bird-person. No, Ahnu was just something of a social disaster that had only just started to get the hang of dealing with Hylians, and now was met with a whole new type of clearly not-monster person. They eventually came up with the word “Rito” after watching the subject of their awkwardness for a minute. 

They were a predominantly light blue, parrot-like Rito with what looked to be white down that traveled from below their black beak to under a dark hide harness, which aside from some cloth strapped to or draped over the leather, appeared to be their only sort of attire. They also had multiple accent colors, including feathers of a yellow and navy variety, as well as some red that dotted their cheeks, serving as the highlight of their intricate facial markings. 

By all accounts, they were a very stunning individual, pretty to Ahnu in a way that Hylians weren’t—not to say that Hylians couldn’t be pretty to Ahnu, but that the means of appreciating the aesthetics of those from other species were just different. 

Deciding that they were done behaving like a child, Ahnu stood up straight from behind the crates where they’d been hiding, put their mask back on, and emphatically marched over to and past the Rito, their gait very much so stilted and strange in their avid attempt to seem nonchalant. They faltered in their step when the accordion playing abruptly stopped as they passed the bird-person, nearly causing them to take what would have been a very embarrassing tumble as they reached the doorway of the Stable. They froze like a deer that heard a twig snap, only instead of a noise alerting them, it was the lack thereof. For a long moment that was more awkward than it was fraught, Ahnu clung to the wrapped up curtain doorway of the stable—the thick tarps usually only being dropped well after the sun went down—and refused to let go. They could feel the Rito’s eyes on their back, and for a stressful moment, they were sure the accordionist was going to start some sort of conversation with them. 

Fortunately, the tune of whatever song the Rito was playing before Ahnu’s embarrassing intrusion picked up again, dismissing whatever spell of anxiety that kept them still. In immediate hindsight, the musician was probably just caught off guard by their mask, like most of the people that were staring at them from inside the Stable were. Under the pressure of so many eyes, Ahnu quickly pushed their mask to the side of their head and made their way over to the reception desk, which made practically all of the Stable goers dismiss their odd behavior, and go back to minding their own business. 

Heading over to their designated bed, Ahnu shrugged off their weapons and shoved them beneath the frame before plopping down onto the bed and closing the privacy curtains on both sides. They disrobed down to just their undershorts, happy to be free of the itchy thermal undershirt of the doublet. They were really starting to get tired of the accursed article. 

Pushing their shed clothing to the end of the bed, Ahnu reclined onto the pillow, holding out the heart mask above themself. In the dark of the night and the dimmed Stable lanterns for the sake of the sleeping, the thing really _did_ seem to glow, though whether it was on account of just barely luminescent pigments or just an optical effect superimposed by the intensity of the colors themselves, Ahnu couldn’t determine. The patterns looked as if they were moving if stared at for long enough, the overall visage almost pulsing in time with their own heartbeat. Overall, the mask was just plain weird. Strangely, monstrously beautiful, but still weird, and to be honest they kind of liked that about it—though they could see why it might garner a few odd glances. 

Bringing the mask back down to themself, they held it to their chest and turned to their side, curling around it to sleep in the fetal position in a manner very reminiscent of the first time they found the mask—granted, this was something they hardly recalled on account of blacking out. 

Pushing that thought aside like they did most, Ahnu closed their eyes, only to be greeted by the rare not-nightmare that they won’t remember— _two large yellow eyes, as big and pale as the moon, with two ruby red irises staring down at them, pupils narrowed to a pinprick._

* * *

“Nah, we’re all good over here.” Benny replied to Ahnu. “No monsters of notable caliber to be seen.” she added in a manner that sounded as if it had been rehearsed or repeated several times, while tossing some kindle onto the small fire she’d just gotten going. Had Ahnu stumbled upon this woman randomly, they would have been a bit curious as to why a lone Hylian made long term camp up on a small plateau of sorts, but they were here on an assignment that gave them that very reason why. 

At the behest of the Stable master of the Wetlands, Ahnu took on a quick job cataloguing the types, the amount of, and the colors of the nearby monsters, as well as meeting with a treasure-hunting traveler turned lookout to get a status update on the Castle fields. Evidently, there had been an issue a few months back when what the Stable master dubbed a “Stalker” got too close for comfort to the river that divided the Stable from the center region of Hyrule, that border being the only thing between the people on one side and the guardians on the other. The Stable started regularly employing travelers looking for short term jobs to serve as lookouts after that incident, as well as people to handle communication between posts and to deal with nearby monsters—either by surveying them or taking them out, which Ahnu chose to do subsequently. 

It really did make them wonder just how dire the situation that was Hyrule’s monster and machine infestation was, and how quickly it had to have been progressing to warrant surveys and scouting on top of constant patrols being done by those who live at the Stables and were relatively able. 

“Hey, space-cadet, can you hear me?” Benny said, her voice a little too loud, making Ahnu jump, but also succeeding in getting their attention. “Now that I’ve got your attention, I’ll repeat.” she said with a playful attitude and a coy smile. “I’ve got some rice and spice. If you’ve got any sort of meat or mushrooms, why don’t we share and have ourselves a nice meal?”

Ahnu briefly considered the proposition, before nodding and walking around the other side of the rock that obscured Benny’s camp from them. She was more than amused when they emerged from the other side of the rock holding both meat AND mushrooms, having not broken their stride in their quick trek around the boulder, that she didn’t even bother to question their antics and where they procured the food stuffs. 

As Ahnu helped prepare the food for cooking, they began to re-evaluate their decision to never let anyone see the Slate. They always kept it hidden in their vest jacket when around people, only tying it to their hip when no one was around. Would anyone care? Would anyone even recognize what it was? Even if they did, what would anyone do about it? 

Ahnu was decently assured in themself that they could defend from anyone that might try to take it from them, and was doubtful that almost anyone would look at the Sheikah Slate in their possession and have enough context in the current day and age to make the leaps in logic required to figure out who Ahnu is. Well, almost no one aside from someone in Kakariko. 

Actually, they’d never really thought about it—mostly because they didn’t want to—but if they were supposed to meet someone there that was alive when the king was nearly 100 years ago, then whoever that person was would have to be old. _Very_ old. The king did refer to her as an elder, but did that imply that she was his senior back then, or that he’d accounted for the changes of time. Wasn’t it a little presumptuous to assume that whoever this “Impa” was, she was still alive? And not just because she would be very old (Sheikah live to be older than the average Hylian, right? That fact checks out, or at least they think it does), but because that would imply that she was of the evident minority that survived the Calamity. Perhaps how her village and others were affected by the apocalyptic event and everything that came after had a majority to do with location and proximity to the events—or rather, the lack thereof. 

“Heyo, Earth to you!” Benny said, not quite as loud as the last time she snapped them out of their reverie, indicative of the fact that she noticed how hard they flinched at the sudden alert of their person. Ahnu looked over to her, almost instantly forgetting their train of thought. “Food time, so dig in before I eat it all myself.” the woman joked, pushing a utensil into their hands.

Ahnu and Benny ate from the shared pot for a while in silence, with nothing but the sound of the wind and the crackle of the fire to fill the air in-between the two. From their position around the fire, Ahnu had an unfortunately proximate view of the far off Castle, though it was just a dark blur on the horizon. They were perfectly fine not addressing how they felt about that, and set up their own tarp on the other side of the boulder that now served to divide their camp from Benny’s after they’d both finished the food.

* * *

“Ugh, those three are back down by the shore ruins...” Lawdon said as he looked over the notepad he lent Ahnu. He was surprised by how thorough the young Hylian was, though their penmanship could use some work. He was a bit confused by the X’s on the left margins by each enemy listed, which apparently amounted to a black Bokoblin on the bridge and a blue archer Bokoblin on a platform held up by four sky Octoroks serving as a lookout, as well as a trio of the pig monsters, two black and one blue, down on the river shore. There were also five Stalkoblins spread about the path they took, but really, who counts those? He was less confused when the Hylian he’d paid to survey the monsters explained that the symbols signified which monsters they'd—er, “dispatched” as they so eloquently signed. 

“Yolero, those three pigs down at the ruins across the way are back!” Lawdon yelled from over his counter to the Stable-hand who persistently thrashed a simple training post with what looked to be a torch. Ahnu backed away from the man as he yelled to his friend, covering their ears.

“Huh?” Lawdon exclaimed in confusion, before his face pinched some in slight distress. “Oh! Sorry dear! I didn’t mean to yell so close to you!” he apologized, figuring the Hylian to either have sensitive ears or just not like yelling. Ahnu removed their hands from their head and signed a quick reassurance to the man just as Yolero came over.

“Oh yeah? Those three again? Though I chased them off last month.” the man said, swinging his torch to rest over his shoulder as if it were heavy. 

“Yeah, well, they’re back.” Lawdon replied, passing Ahnu’s little survey over to the pale-skinned and gangly man, who squinted at the list. Ahnu didn’t quite understand what the problem was. They’d already taken care of the situation by killing the monsters, and it didn’t seem as if the Stable master thought them to be untruthful in their report. 

“Hm. Well alright then!” Tolero replied with gusto. “I’ll chase em’ off first thing tomorrow, just you wait!” he exclaimed, before turning off to head back to his combat practice post. “I’ll get in some good exercise tonight, and drive em’ away with my legendary weapon!” 

Lawdon brought his hand up to his face, as if he were shielding himself from secondhand embarrassment. Ahnu was just confused. Somewhat about the prospects of this “Legendary Weapon” of his, but they were mostly still hung up on the whole “dealing with the monsters tomorrow” thing. Did they need to reiterate that they killed them all?

Unfortunately, before they could further discuss anything with Lawdon, a traveler had already occupied his attention and busied him with the process of filling out the necessary paperwork to board a horse for the week. Ahnu instead pursued Tolero with the subject, but he seemed a bit too enthusiastic to talk about anything but his legendary weapon he dubbed the “Master Torch” which both disappointed them on multiple levels as well as made them doubt the functionality of the man’s mental faculties. 

As the man continued to speak with his back facing them, Ahnu had sat down near the cooking pot and next to a very tired looking child as they listened to his long winded lecture on the immaculate make of his torch while he continued to haphazardly swing it around. Eventually, the dog that had been prowling around the stable begging for scraps from the Rito musician—who played his accordion incessantly, not that Ahnu was complaining—came over to Ahnu and put its head on their lap while giving them puppy eyes, which effectively made a sucker out of them. 

Looking around to see if anyone was looking directly at them, then deciding that they didn’t care anymore if anyone was, Ahnu pulled their Slate out of their jacket and withdrew a few apples from it, which they promptly fed to the very happy dog. Ahnu hardly picked up on it, but the music of the accordion had fallen into a lull as they pet the dog, and had they looked up, they might have caught the bird-man side-eying them. Alas, they did not, as the very cute dog that had gently taken their gloved hand into it’s mouth had all of their attention. Soon enough, the music resumed and the dog had lead Ahnu past the Musician, around to the back of the stable, and into the woods.

* * *

They had just finished digging up some treasure the dog had led them to when someone’s voice had penetrated the air around the trees. 

“Satty! Come here Satty!”

The dog had perked up at the call, giving Ahnu just enough time to figure that “Satty” was the dog’s name before being proven correct by the dog darting off, back towards the stable. Ahnu collected the treasure from the metal chest—a single silver rupee—before flushing in embarrassment when they recalled that they could have just pulled it out of the ground with magnesis. Granted, any onlookers would think them normal and not remotely unintelligent for manually digging up treasure, seeing how no one else had access to a Slate and it’s runes, but that didn’t stop them from feeling dumb for the oversight. Thankfully, only a dog truly knew of their blunder. 

Getting up and dusting the dirt off of their clothes, Ahnu made their way back to the Stable. They noticed the orange light as they approached, which made them realize that they had yet to activate and complete the Shrine, having gotten asked to run the survey errand first thing yesterday morning. Before they could rectify their mistake of inaction, the dog from earlier had trotted back over to them with a Hylian in tow, gently bumping into their legs as if to ask for more attention. 

“Oh so you’re the one who dragged her away?” the balding Hylian said in a lighthearted manner as he looked at the dog, hands on his hips. Ahnu could only assume that he was talking about the dog, which if the case, wasn’t exactly accurate considering how it was actually the dog that led Ahnu into the woods. 

‘She led me into the woods.’ Ahnu signed, correcting the assumption. 

“Oh, I was...” the Hylian began, sounding rather sheepish as he brought one hand up to rub at the back of his neck. “Talking to the dog. He’s a boy.”

Now that gave Ahnu pause. They needed a second to consider the implication of what the stranger was saying, before what was the obvious misunderstanding made itself clear to them. 

‘I’m not a her.’ they signed. They weren’t exactly offended, but Ahnu had yet to meet someone who’s made such an assumption, so their reaction to the like was an emphatic neutral. 

“Yeah, I sorta figured. Sorry.” the Hylian said, squatting down to rub the face of the dog. He began to mumble something to himself, which Ahnu only caught the tail end of. Something about how “there ain’t nothing but men and kids here...”

Ahnu clapped their hands to get his attention, and signed, ‘I am not a man, either.’ when the stranger looked at them. 

“But you are a kid.” the stranger said as a matter-of-fact.

That was debatable. Ahnu didn’t know how old they were. 

“Anyways, yeah. Sorry bout’ the ‘she’ thing.” the Hylian reiterated, still giving all of his attention to the dog named Satty. “My step-mom was a Gerudo, and she kinda had a habit of referring to anyone that didn’t have a beard as a woman.” the stranger chuckled. “Guess it rubbed off on me a little.”

Gerudo? That word sounded familiar to Ahnu, but they couldn’t quite place where they’d heard that before. On top of just the phonetics, there was something about that word that sparked the barest bit of recognition in them. The closest comparison was the nostalgia Ahnu felt when they thought of the Sheikah—or at least how they used to feel before the legacy and leftovers of them became common fixtures in Ahnu’s life that served to desensitize—only minus the negative connotations. 

They clapped again, signing when the stranger looked up at them. ‘What is a G-E-R-‘

“You mean Gerudo?” the Hylian interrupted, Taking his right index finger and dragging it across his chin from left to right in what Ahnu could only assume to be the first half of the sign for the word “desert”, but instead of splaying both hands open and downwards to make horizontal circular gestures, the stranger seamlessly transitioned to signing the word “woman.” It was a bit presumptuous on his part to cut them off like that, but Ahnu let it slide on account of the fact that he was at least correct, and effectively gave them the sign they were looking for. 

Ahnu repeated the gesture a few times, once to get the confirmation of the Hylian—who nodded at them—and then several more times to commit the sign to memory, but with some difficulty. It didn’t quite feel like the motions matched whatever notions the word stirred in their head. 

“Yeah, Gerudo.” the stranger said while signing the word again. “Though there’s also the more modern—” he abruptly cut off to sign the first half of desert again, but instead of signing woman, he signed what looked to be a single handed version of the word “people.”

Ahnu repeated that sign too, finding that they liked it more than the first. Their hands seemed to take to that set of gestures more readily too, as if an old forgotten reflex of theirs was just reacquired.

“Yep. So did you just want to know the sign for Gerudo, or did you really grow up so sheltered as to not know bout’ the big desert ladies? Cause there’s not much I can tell you aside from that.” The Hylian said indifferently, getting up from their crouched position to stretch his back. “They’re big ladies that typically live in or at least come from the desert and have their own language or something, and that’s about all there is to know of em.’”

Ahnu didn’t have time to process how much they didn’t care for being referred to as “sheltered”—not that admitting to having some form of amnesia was information they’d be willing to divulge—because the news that there were people out there who were essentially different from Hylians made them wonder a litany of other things. What was this Gerudo language he’d mentioned? How was it different from Hylian? How different were the Gerudo to Hylians like the man before them? Were they as different to Hylians as a Rito might be? And once Ahnu was on the subject of races relative to Hylians, they couldn’t help but question what the Sheikah were too—them also being a race of people who were non-Hylian (granted, Ahnu had yet to actually meet one). Actually, what did it even mean to be a Hylian? Wouldn’t anyone in Hyrule be considered “Hylian?” Or would the term actually be “Hyrulian?”

“Kid, you ok?” the stranger asked, looking at Ahnu in a less than amused kind of way. 

Ahnu blinked. Satty gently head butted their legs, and Ahnu immediately pet him, before nodding to his evident owner. 

“Good. You looked like you drifted off while standing up straight.” he said in a voice that didn’t seem too reassured, but more on account of the fact that he wasn’t too invested in whatever non-serious train of thought Ahnu was on. “Anyways, I’m Quince, and this here’s Satty, if you hadn’t already figured that out by my yelling.” he gestured to the dog Ahnu was giving scritches on the cheek. 

Feeling a little more confident now that they had the Hylian’s name, they immediately signed to Quince that he ‘seemed grumpy.’ which he responded to with a shrug.

“See those clouds to the East?” He pointed to the dark cloud cover that almost entirely shrouded the distance. Ahnu squinted, and resisted the urge to pull out their Slate to use the zoom feature to see what he was talking about. Even with Ahnu’s good eyesight, dust and water vapor in the air only let people see so far. The fact that they could barely make out the storm he was pointing to at least indicated it probably wasn’t beyond 20 kilometers out. 

“Rain sours my mood.” Quince said, and before Ahnu could ask him if he was really so sensitive to showers that a storm so far away and downwind could make him upset, he continued, “That storm started two months ago come tomorrow, and hasn’t let up. Whenever high winds hit it, they break off a section of it and carry these huge rainstorms all over the place.”

Now those last two sentences were fairly concerning. An abnormally extensive storm had pervaded over a singular region for practically two months? The fact that parts of it were ripped away only to travel and disperse over potentially great distances was another issue altogether, and it made Ahnu wonder if the near constant rains they experienced back in Deya were one of these fragmented storms. 

“With all this rain on top of every other traveler’s doom-saying, I’m pretty lucky that I’ve got Satty here to cheer me up.” He pulled out some dried meat from a pouch on the side of his belt, the noise of the button clasp clicking making the dog in question perked up and turned away from Ahnu, happy and eager to receive a treat. 

“Aww, who’s a good boy?” Quince asked in what Ahnu interpreted to be an uncharacteristic amount of enthusiasm as he fed his dog. “Who’s been keeping me sane for six years now? You have! Yes you have!” he continued with the baby talk.

‘Six years?’ Ahnu signed to him when he looked back up to see them still there. 

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Me and Satty go way back. You see the thing is...” Quince trailed off into a mumble, before looking at Ahnu a little more pointedly. “I owe him my life.”

Ahnu’s eyebrows raised in interest, and they tiled their head. Quince caught on to the fact that what he’d said had held their interest, by virtue of their very obvious physical quirks. 

“Look, it’s a pretty long story—are you sure you want to hear it?” Quince said with a sigh. He didn’t care much when it came to talking about himself, but he did like talking about Satty.

Ahnu nodded, and plopped right down on the grass and dirt, legs crossed. Quince decided to sit down too, Satty laying down besides him, the dog shoving his head into Quince’s lap. He smiled down at his dog while giving the happy animal a couple pats on the stomach, before turning back to Ahnu. 

“All right. Here goes...”

* * *

It was getting late by the time Quince was finishing up his story, which had absolutely enthralled Ahnu. To be honest, they thought he was kind of rude, but also straightforward and clearly enamored with his dog, so he was far from a bad person. He was pretty willing to share what he felt to be the most interesting thing that ever happened to him with them after all, which prompted Ahnu to make a mental note about this Satori Mountain. It was a bit unfortunate that the mystical location was closer to where they began their travels, being North-West of the Outskirts Stable they left behind, but perhaps someday they’d find their way back to that region. 

“If you’re feeling brave, you should go find that glowing beast on the mountain and give it a stern talking to.” Quince said, officially rounding up his story. 

Ahnu had the feeling that this “Glowing Beast” he was talking about was likely a mountain spirit, or even a minor deity of some sort. Not once did it cross their mind that he may have just been making up the story on account of how sincere he seemed. 

Noticing how the sun was starting to set, Ahnu made to bid Quince farewell, getting to their feet and dusting the dirt and dog hair off of their pants. Just as they turned around to go, Quince seemed to remember something.

“Oh! Hey, kid.” he said, trying to get Ahnu’s attention. When they turned to him he continued, “You, uh, might wanna lay low tomorrow. Or you know, skip this Stable altogether.”

Ahnu tilted their head in confusion at him, but didn’t even get the chance to raise their hands to ask ‘why?’

“Some weirdo Prince guy has been traveling around bugging Hylians like us about coming with him to his kingdom to help him with—I don’t know, something.” Quince said, becoming irritable just at the memory. “A while back he said he’d be returning to this here Stable to see if any of the regulars, like me, have made up their minds about coming to help him, so me and Satty are gonna take a day’s hike in the woods to dodge him. That business sounds pretty sketchy to me.”

Ahnu still wasn’t quite sure as to what Quince was getting at, which he seemed to pick up on and elaborate. 

“Look, I’m only telling you this because you’re clearly an awkward kid wandering around in a mostly empty world, filled with nothing but monsters and the occasional person.” he said, bringing a hand up to brush over his barren pate. “If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably wanna avoid this guy. He’s, uh, pretty intense.”

His judgment of Ahnu was spot on enough that they didn’t feel the need to comment on being called awkward, since the supposition was pretty fair. They decided to heed his words with some skepticism.

‘What does this Prince look like?’ they signed. 

“Oh, you can’t miss him.” Quince said, raising his right hand. He made the sign for “water” and swiftly transitioned it into the half sign for “person” that he used when demonstrating the word Gerudo for them. “He‘s a Zora, and a big one at that. Big and bright red.” He made the sign again. “To be honest, I thought he was kinda pretty, if a bit too enthusiastic, until I found out he was a guy.” he added kind of sheepishly. 

Ahnu elected to ignore that last statement as they mimicked his gesturing. Water person? Was that what he was sort of signing? Was that the sign for this “Zora” he was talking about? The gesture definitely felt right, like it matched the word, but considering that Ahnu didn’t even KNOW what a Zora was, they weren’t so inclined as to trust whatever inkling of theirs that popped into their mind. 

“Now I can actually believe that you don’t know what Zora are, since they’ve mostly stayed cooped up in their kingdom for the last few decades, but they’re these fish people that can breathe air AND water.” Quince explained. “Don’t go attacking them if you see one, but I suggest you keep a low profile around them. Word to the wise is that they’re kinda tetchy round’ Hylians as of the late. Don’t really know why.”

Ahnu took what he told them with a grain of salt, and departed soon after. Having done little more than walk to the Stable and through the woods that day, as well as talk to a few people, Ahnu was itching to do something physical, and they especially wanted to handle the Shrine adjacent to the Wetlands Stable before they forgot again. 

* * *

It was a Cryonis-centric water puzzle with three of the tiny non-threat guardians spread throughout. Nothing particularly surprising or challenging. Was it an issue that Ahnu already felt like they were just going through the motions just over a dozen Shrine’s in? Just how many of these were there, anyway? How come every Stable they’d visited thus far existed in close proximity to one?

On the lift back up from the depths of the Shrine, they’d settled on the theory that if the ancient Sheikah monuments really have been around for 10,000 years, then the founder of the Stable system across Hyrule must have made the deliberate choice to build near the Shrines. The Stables as they existed now were established just after the Calamity after all—if the sayings of other travelers were to be believed that is—which means that it was the only suggestion that made sense aside from coincidence. 

So caught up in their thoughts and useless theories, Ahnu hadn’t even noticed that they’d been deposited back up onto the surface world, and had been standing completely still, arms crossed, inside of the mouth of the Shrine while staring off into nothing with an unfocused gaze. 

Staring off in the exact direction of the Rito Musician, who was wide-eyed with their beak slightly parted in surprise. 

For an unbearably long moment, neither of the two said anything, nor did either dare look away. Like a deer and a horse that have just caught sight of each other in a field, knowing that neither posed a predatory threat to the other, but both entirely unwilling to push their luck at their most paranoid. In the large pause shared between them, Ahnu could tell that they’d spent a fair few hours in the Shrine, solely based on how dark it was around them. Darker than usual, even. 

Had they bothered to look even the slightest bit up, they would have enough of a spectacle to distract them from the situation at hand. Alas, they still felt so inclined to indulge that almost animal-like instinct of theirs to the point that breaking eye contact with someone who was most likely a non-hostile was at the very least unfavorable, and at the most, inconceivable.

It was only when the Musician opened their beak just a little wider, and the barest hint of some utterance crept out, was the spell over Ahnu broken. Time fell back into place and Ahnu finally blinked, having subconsciously refused to do so under the scrutiny of the stranger. Their arms dropped to their sides and they let out a quick, deep breath. 

Then, Ahnu decided to make a break for it. 

They sprinted out of the Shrine’s entrance, past the stranger who did little more than let out a surprised yelp at Ahnu’s speed. They moved so fast that they couldn’t have seen the bright magenta glinting off the grass at their feet if they tried.

“Ah-aah! Wha—“ the Rito stuttered, his head cranking over in the direction Ahnu had run off too. 

“Wait! Please, I—“ but the strange Hylian that had somehow come up through the floor of the Shrine didn’t slow to hear the rest of his plea. 

It was a ridiculous action for Ahnu to take, all things considered. It made sense that at some point, someone would see them interacting with Sheikah technology in some capacity, especially with how stupidly close each Stable they’d visited thus far was to a Shrine. They’d already come to the conclusion that there was nothing anyone could do to separate them from their Slate if that person wasn’t prepared to kill them for it, and no matter how big the Rito looked, Ahnu doubted that the bird-person could put up much of a fight. 

They began to slow their pace, reaching the front of the Stable before they stopped altogether, having effectively reasoned themself out of their inane stupor, and all the behavior that followed. They turned around to see the Rito awkwardly jogging up behind them, their bird-like anatomy clearly not built for any sort of constant, mid-level pace. They turned away from the oncoming stranger and laced their gloved fingers together over their stomach, almost as if they were physically bracing themself for whatever imminent conversation they we’re about to have instead of nervously clasping their hands together like a child who just got caught doing something they shouldn’t. 

It was only when the Rito was right behind them, when they wanted to look anywhere but at the musician, did they look down to the ground—

Which seemed to be alight with a ruddish glow?

They looked all around them then, finally picking up on the ever so slightly red hue that tinted the air. They were so irrationally panicked about being caught mingling with Sheikah structures that they hadn’t even bothered to pay attention to their surroundings, which left them almost surprised when the Assailant in their head didn’t immediately criticize them for such a discrepancy. 

Only after they failed to source the eerie lighting to any nearby fixture—maybe a traveler's lantern used for finding bugs or fishing since it was the only color that didn’t seem to bother low-sentient creatures—did they think to look up. Their gaze gingerly traced along the path of a single, curiously bright spec that seemed to raise from the gravel and dirt beneath their feet, languidly drifting upwards like some heavy and carefree insect. They barely had any time to recognize that the little phenomena was neither unique nor benign, what with the uncountable and endless menagerie of malevolent firefly-like drifting up and about towards the heavens in some obscene form of rapture and relief from the earth, leaving inky trails in their turbulent wake. No, they paid the strange, evil looking things next to no mind—the thing in the sky captivating them so raptly; so _horrified._

In an instant, their body tensed. Their blood ran feverishly hot through limbs that were starting to burn under the constriction of every muscle pulled taunt. Their formerly clasped hands went to grab tightly at their clothed abdomen, as if to stop their stomach from physically falling out of their belly. 

Their skin and their clothes—all drenched in sweat—were bathed in a bloody sheen, with their pale colored irises reflecting the garishness all too accurately. Had one been looking at their face, focusing on their wide, practically bulging eyes instead of the general look of confusion and absolute terror that painted it, there would have been quite the challenge in distinguishing them from the normally silver satellite—that at the moment, was anything _but._

The very moon above their head that shone an angry _red_ against the black sky, with arches and tendrils of crimson seemingly leaping off of its surface and flooding the world below in a fine mist of it all. 

Ahnu felt like they were caught in some terrible spotlight. It was as if the moon at its biggest and highest was staring right back at them, and at just them specifically, like they were the reason this was happening. Right now, all the _hate_ that reflected off of the moon and into their eyes was meant just for _them_ , and it was absolutely _terrifying_ —

—And yet, in just a few moments they hadn’t even registered the passing of, that anger and terror that they felt (was that just them? Were they the angry one?) seemed to just wash away like water. Angry red and purple fireflies having mostly dispersed, or ascended, or what have you.

When they blinked, they noticed that the moon was full and bright in it’s usual, gentle sort of way. When they blinked again, and the nightmarish vision never once returned to plague them, they’d almost wondered if any of what just happened was even real. Was that just another one of their hallucinations? They’d only had a few by this point, and each certainly felt real, but they were all comparatively benign. That’s what made them bearable. 

Ahnu didn’t know if they could keep going if any part of their imagination decided to throw something that horrible at them again. 

Thankfully, such was about to prove as a non-issue for the time being, as a slight clearing of the throat from the Rito Ahnu forgot was behind them—making them nearly jump out of their skin—served as the prelude for an explanation that would save their sanity. 

“Er, hello there?” the Rito said, voice gentle but dripping with trepidation—like he was addressing a wild animal that could start flailing at any given moment. Though, also, somehow despite his clear caution, strangely resonant? 

Ahnu turned to look at him with a furrowed brow, and wide, glossy eyes. 

The Rito seemed to deflate at just the sight of how small and almost helpless they looked, a very knowing and sympathetic glint lighting the corner of his own eyes. 

“Is this your first time seeing a Blood Moon?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I'd be freaked out too. Also, no, They don't hear Zelda's voice every month--that was a one time call of that nature, and Ahnu hung up early. Also also, I'll mention here that I consider each of the 12 months of Hyrule to be a uniform 28 days, but I'll explain that more in a tumblr post. Eventually. Anyways, thanks so much for reading! Next time we follow Ahnu as they make a friend!


	8. Chapter 8--  Other People Exist Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu gets to know the Rito and self-proclaimed bard, and listens to a song that forces them to process some things they had trouble doing beforehand. Then, just when they start to get a handle things, they're pushed into an overstimulating position that pushes all progress to the backburner.

“It was quite the shock to see you rise out of the ground from inside that thing. I was speechless!” Kass said with a gentle laugh punctuating the end of his sentence. “I could see that you were too!”

Ahnu was fiddling with their bracelet, having pulled off their gloves to mess with it in an abashed attempt to distract from the conversation they were a regretfully willing participant in. Fingers gliding over the smooth, resin covered wood, or gently tugging on the soft, embroidered silk band served as enough of an outlet for the adrenaline that was still pumping through their veins. 

Kass seemed to take note of their discomfort and nervous disposition, and elected to generally avert his gaze from their fleeting one—the Hylian seeming to favor scanning their surroundings over making eye contact—hoping that he could put their anxieties at ease, even if only in some small form. 

Kass had gingerly suggested that he and the Hylian head over to the opposite end of the Stable grounds to converstate away from the mostly sleeping residents, where the bulk of the settlement’s supplies and caravans rested in a partially fenced-in perimeter. He sat on the rider’s front of a wheelbarrow, and the Hylian had situated themself a couple meters away on the corner of the nearest hay-trolley. They followed him and seated themself willingly on all accounts, but it was clear to them that they really didn’t want to be there, or anywhere for that matter—that’s probably why they even agreed to talk to him anyhow, because they couldn’t think of much else to do. 

Luckily, Kass was a patient man. 

“Are you alright, my young friend?” he asked, voice filled with genuine concern as he chanced a look at their face, meeting their eyes when they looked at him as he addressed them directly. They looked—well, not exactly frightened—disheveled, maybe?

When it was clear that they were still unwilling to speak, he decided to shift gears, and move the topic away from any mentions of Sheikah technology for the time being. 

“I understand that Blood Moons are quite the event for some. They’re quite unsettling, no matter how many times you see one in your lifetime.” he added. That was certainly true for himself. As an artist he could appreciate the beauty to be found almost anywhere, in most things and creatures, but there was little to be said about how he felt about the dark phenomena. Awe, to be sure, but the feeling was more akin to the morbid fascination one felt when gazing upon the unique skeletal structure peeking through the desiccated flesh of a rotting carcass.

‘Why?’ they signed, with no further elaboration, much to Kass’s confusion. 

“Er-“ he started, not quite sure what they were asking. “I’m afraid you have to be a bit more specific with your question, my friend.” 

‘Why does that happen?’ They extended, not exactly looking at the Rito, but more like just past him. 

“Oh! You mean Blood Moons?” Kass asked in kind, getting a quick nod in response. Well, now that was the kicker, wasn’t it? Kass had already figured that the possibility that the young Hylian had never seen one was on the table, as unlikely as it was, but to not know of it altogether at their age? Granted, he didn’t know how old they were, but they were clearly closer to resembling an adult than a child. 

“Ah, well, no one really knows why...” he began, figuring the answer would be as dissatisfying to them as it was to most people all these decades later. “But if oral-records are you be trusted, most agree that the phenomena started the first full moon post-Calamity,” he took a moment to recall something before adding on, “-which has led to widespread speculation that it’s something of an unnatural occurrence that started as a direct result of the return of—“ Kass abruptly stopped himself. “Well, you know...” he apprehensively finished, looking off to the left, where the careful eye could just barely make out the speck that was the silhouette of the crumbling Castle, besmirched by darkness. 

Most people avoid saying it’s name, and Kass was a reluctant member of that majority. 

When he looked back to the Hylian, he was surprised, if a tad unnerved, to see them staring right at him now, the stone cold glare making him shift a bit where he sat. 

‘How do you know for sure?’ they signed, sitting still and rigid in place, moving nothing else but their hands and arms. 

“Well, I suppose I don’t. No one does.” Despite the strained mood, he couldn’t help but let out a soft chuckle, much to the Hylian’s confusion. He quickly explained his small fit, “Though the fact that the monster population experiences a great boon by the Blood Moon’s light is certainly a convincing bit of evidence!” He continued to laugh quietly as the Hylian looked on at him, clearly none the wiser. 

When Kass finally calmed enough to notice that the Hylian had, if anything, looked even more confused than before, a subtle realization had begun to form in the back of his mind. It was one he had simply brushed aside when he saw them take apples out of their small and interestingly designed storage vessel. It became something he tried to ignore when he witnessed them rise out of the Shrine, having fruitlessly been trying to convince himself that the adolescent had likely just stumbled into the structure, given how they seemed just as shocked as he did. But he knew that wasn’t the case. He’d tirelessly studied the Shrine back at his village, and knew that there was no way to get into one of them by the means of force, let alone chance. His gaze flitted down to their hip very briefly before he returned to studying their face. 

“Ah, forgive me.” he started, a bit more serious now, but in his characteristically gentle sort of way. More firm than consequential. “I know that most people try not to expose children to such an event until they’re older. As a father myself, I know that’s certainly the case for my family.”

At that, the Hylian perked just a bit, which he barely caught on to, so he decided to work that angle further. Perhaps they liked hearing more about other people than being directly addressed themself?

“Me and my wife usually sent our children to bed early, just around sunset, and told them that the ‘Night of Monsters’ was afoot.” Kass said, smiling fondly to himself at the memories. He paused as a brief and bittersweet bout of homesickness washed over him. How had it only been two months? He shook his head at the thought.

“The kids of my village usually knew what a blood moon entailed, but only vaguely. I can believe that some people might have done things differently.” he went on, trying subtly to appeal to a believable sort of logic. He let out a laugh that was more forced than anything else, but he doubted the Hylian could tell. “I suppose I’m not as good at discerning the age of Hylians as I thought!” 

Now, Kass didn’t like lying. He preferred the term “stretching the truth.” Being a Rito, it made sense that he wouldn’t be as proficient at guessing the age of those of a species he wasn’t—or at least it made sense to others. 

“I thought you to be a tad older than you probably are, so maybe it makes sense that you don’t know an awful lot about the world.” he finished, making it rather obvious that he was offering them an out on the subject—a chance to displace their ignorance onto however they were brought up, which is something Kass wouldn’t be able to know. 

The Hylian seemed to consider what he was saying, before—by the looks of it—they took that offer of his, nodding along to his (not exactly inaccurate but likely erroneous) extrapolation. Of course, he had no way to validate if they'd truly picked up on his steering of the conversation, consciously aware and approving of his assumption, or if they merely opted for maintaining reticence out of the convenience it's simplicity offered. Kass could perceive well enough that they likely wouldn't be receptive to anymore of his prying, so asking them directly about their general comprehension and handle on the subject in question was something of a non-option. Regardless, he smiled at them softly, more shown in the quirk of his eye than the upturn at the corners of his beak. 

“Oh! How rude of me!” Kass remarked, effectively brushing off the subject at hand, much to the mutual relief of himself and his young Hylian friend. “I’ve yet to introduce myself! Please allow me to do just so.” He made to stand, softly bowing in a greeting. 

“I am Kass, a bard from the Village of the Rito.” he said, furthering his smile. “And may I ask the name of my newest friend?” 

He hopped that they didn’t feel pressured by his insistence, but by the look of how comparatively slack they were as opposed to earlier, he found his worries misplaced. 

‘A-H-N-U’ they spelt with their hands after only a slight pause, which momentarily caught Kass off guard. That wasn't the answer he expected. He quickly and discernibly shook off his slight shock, watching the Hylian as they seemed to fumble a bit with their hands after that, almost as if they were not sure what else their was to say, but clearly wanting to express something. 

‘Hello.’ they finally added after a time, standing themself to punctuate their greeting with a small bow in return. Kass gave a genuine chuckle in return. 

“Hello to you too, Ahnu!” he chimed, his voice at a more comfortable rhythm now, practically musical in his relief. The Hylian, Ahnu, was clearly a little awkward and embarrassed, but such was leagues better than terrified and uncomfortable. His naturally congenial, yet also calm disposition seemed to agree with them rather well. 

“Say, Ahnu.” Kass said, hopping to keep their attention for just a little longer, “Have you heard of the Ancient Songs of Hyrule?”

* * *

Come late in the morning, Ahnu was sitting cross legged on the covered stack of crates they’d hidden behind when they first came to the Wetlands Stable, back when they were trying to avoid the attention of the accordionist that they now somewhat excitedly waited for to finish fine-tuning his accordion. What a difference two and a half days can make. 

When Kass had first told them about these “Ancient Songs” they weren't nearly as enthused about them as they were not even ten hours later. At ALL. Though, their reluctance shifted into a festering curiosity when the bard had  _ very  _ astutely addressed their clandestine concerns regarding the topics of the “Hero” and the “Calamity” by assuring that the old songs only regarded the feats of the “Ancient Hero” from 10,000 years ago.

The one who’s legacy Ahnu didn’t live up to. 

Admittedly, it was for that very reason that the assurance only lessened the implications of Ahnu’s unknown failures (unknown to the people of Hyrule as well as themself) the slightest amount. It was just another reminder that there was a history behind Hyrule that they’d likely forgotten, both the more recent tragedies and the more distant triumphs that only serve to extravasate the discomfort they felt in the place of the guilt they didn’t have enough of an emotional investment in  _ anything  _ to feel. 

Was it the threat of that guilt that deterred them from becoming attached at all? Could they even be held responsible for not feeling—not  _ wanting  _ to feel—the heaviness that arose from the failure of a them that they were stripped of—against their own will at that (not that Ahnu was complaining, or even had the foundation that was a sense of self to complain on). Should they regret the actions of a them they couldn’t remember? Was any of that fair?

That was the train of thought that kept them sleepless with the excessive noise of its metaphorical locomotion—it’s capacity to stir up the most unfavorable hypotheticals; to propagate the worst of their unfounded, and thus poorly understood emotions.

But, there was also a part of them, one that beamed with almost a childish amount of interest (dare they exclaim “optimism”), that served to excite them. Stories were meant to elicit a sort of zeal, right? Even just in the premise—the promise of their delivery—they were supposed to pique intrigue. For Ahnu, they certainly did. 

No matter how much they didn’t like to acknowledge their ties to the Calamity—the enigma that was the context of their forgotten assigned role—they would be hard pressed to deny that they weren’t interested in its lore. They liked hearing travelers talk about the world and its going ons, finding the contemporary to be fascinating, even when all of it was shadowed by a tragedy that fell just short of emotional memory. Long ago enough to not hurt (mostly), but still recently enough to feel the palpable ramifications of a paradigm shift. 

The mentions of the “Ancient Hero” was so distant that the promise of it’s fable truly seemed ineffectual to Ahnu, as if a time so far removed that ornate oral legend was all that carried it could bear no terribly negative ramifications on the present. It felt like a fairy tale. 

Ahnu liked information. They liked stories. Maybe they also liked being talked to, sometimes, when they were in the right mood. Music seemed to put them in a good one. 

“Okay...” Kass uttered somewhat distractedly, mostly to himself as he tested the sound of his instrument briefly before looking up at Ahnu. “Okay. Thank you for your patience, friend.” he resumed with a bright smile, playing his accordion some, more so to demonstrate than to experiment now. “Would you still like to hear a song about the ancient hero?”

Ahnu nodded enthusiastically, much to his amusement. 

“Excellent! Without further ado...”

* * *

**_The Great Calamity was merciless._ **

**_To know Calamity Ganon’s true form, one must know the story from an age long past._ **

_ "The kingdom of Hyrule is a vast and storied land,  _

_ Oft grasped in the palm of a villainous hand.  _

**_The Demon King was born into this kingdom, but his transformation into malice created the horror you see now._ **

_ A dark force of destruction, many times undone,  _

_ Rises once again–Ganon, the calamitous one.  _

**_Stories of Ganon were passed from generation to generation in the form of legends and fairy tales._ **

_ But hope survives in Hyrule, for all is not lost,  _

_ Two brave souls protect it, no matter the cost.  _

**_But there was also...a prophecy._ **

_ A goddess-blood princess and a fearless knight,  _

_ They appear in each age to fight the good fight.  _

_ Their battle with Ganon I've committed to song,  _

_ To keep it through time, no matter how long.  _

_ Now begins the second verse, listen and you'll know,  _

_ Of their battle with Ganon 10,000 years ago.  _

**_“The signs of a resurrection of Calamity Ganon are clear._ **

**_And the power to oppose it lies dormant beneath the ground.”_ **

_ The kingdom of Hyrule was once a land of lasting peace  _

_ A culture of such strength and wit, that suffering did cease.  _

**_We decided to heed the prophecy, and began excavating large areas of land._ **

_ But Ganon lurked beneath the surface, strengthening its jaws  _

_ So the ancient people of Hyrule set out to help the cause.  _

**_It wasn’t long before we discovered several ancient relics made by the hands of our distant ancestors._ **

_ Their efforts bore fruit in an automated force,  _

_ To help avert Calamity by sealing it at its source.  _

**_These relics, the Divine Beasts, were giant machines piloted by warriors._ **

_ Four giant behemoths for which power never ceased,  _

_ Each of these titans was called a "Divine Beast."  _

**_We also found the guardians, an army of mechanical soldiers who fought autonomously._ **

_ And free-willed machines that hunted down their prey  _

_ These Guardians were built to last so they could join the fray.  _

**_This coincided with ancient legends, oft repeated throughout our land._ **

**_We also learned of a princess with a sacred power and her appointed knight, chosen by the sword that seals the darkness._ **

**_It was they who sealed Ganon away using the power of these ancient relics._ **

**_One hundred years ago, there was a princess set to inherit a sacred power and a skilled knight at her side._ **

**_It was clear that we must follow our ancestors‘ path._ **

**_We selected four skilled individuals from across Hyrule and tasked them with the duty of piloting the Divine Beasts._ **

_ To guide the beasts in battle, warriors were needed,  _

_ So four Champions were pledged to see Ganon defeated.  _

**_With the princess as their commander, we dubbed these pilots Champion’s—_ **

**_A name that would solidify their unique bond._ **

**_The princess, her appointed knight, and the rest of the Champion’s were on the brink of sealing away Ganon..._ **

_ Divine Beasts, Champions, princess, and knight,  _

_ Their plan to rout Ganon was looking airtight.  _

**_But nay..._ **

_ And when Calamity Ganon reared its head, Hyrule rose against it  _

_ The optimism of Hyrule all the more incensed it.  _

**_Ganon was cunning, and he responded with a plan beyond our imagining._ **

**_He appeared from deep below Hyrule Castle, seized control of the Guardians and the Divine Beasts,_ **

_ Ganon raged in its assault, boiling with hate,  _

_ It gnashed its teeth and thrashed about, but it was all too late.  _

**_and turned them against us._ **

_ The Guardians kept the heroes safe through every hour...  _

_ The Divine Beasts unleashed attacks that weakened Ganon's power.  _

**_The Champions lost their lives. Those residing in the Castle as well._ **

**_The appointed knight, gravely wounded, collapsed while defending the princess._ **

_ The hero with the sealing sword struck the final blow,  _

_ And the holy power of the princess sealed Ganon so.  _

**_And thus, the kingdom of Hyrule was devastated absolutely by Calamity Ganon._ **

_ And that is the story of the brazen attack, On Calamity Ganon 10,000 years back." _

**_It devastated everything in its path, lo, nearly a century ago._ **

* * *

“Thank you for listening.” Kass said with a bow, officially concluding the song, if the fade out of his accordion’s tune wasn’t enough to go by. 

Ahnu blinked a couple of times, before looking up at the bard. They’d been staring into their lap while listening, one hand idly thumbing a polished knot in the wood of their bangle in a slow, contemplative manner. They were more restless than nervous, but despondency-borne lethargy kept them seated. 

It was impossible to ignore the similarities of the tale spun by the musician and the recount of the dead king, especially when their paths diverted. The inversion of their differing accounts was only that much more highlighted by the modern version, where there is no victory. Where the extant story of a triumph long past is overshadowed by vile reparations of evil ill-defined. 

Strangely enough though, it didn’t bother them? At least not as much as they thought it would, if worse comes to worse. Their mind unwillingly strung together the comparison, but they more or less felt like a bystander to the ordeal. Their only real sentiment being that they liked the song’s melody.

“Ah—ah!” Kass exclaimed, eyes wide, nearly dropping his instrument in his apparent surprise. He managed to catch himself (and his accordion), setting down his instrument carefully before tugging at one of the smaller hemmed cloths on one of his many harness’ loops. He pulled it loose and extended it towards Ahnu, still rather panicked as he asked them, “Are you alright?”

Ahnu looked down at the bandanna, very confused about what he was doing. Was he offering it to them? They weren’t accustomed to receiving things that weren’t food. They gently took it from him, careful to avoid touching his feathered hand, and put it on one knee of their crossed legs before looking back up at him and raising their hands.

‘I’m okay. What’s wrong with you?’ Ahnu signed, oblivious to how devoid of sensibility their phrasing was. Kass looked positively floored by their response, which was an appropriate reaction, all things considered. 

“Mm-me!?” he responded after a moment of floundering. “You!” he said while pointing an almost accusatory feathered finger at them, his distressed tone sounding very silly compared the usual musical quality his voice had. “You’re  _ crying _ !”

...What?

Ahnu’s brow furrowed, and they slowly, tentatively, reached an ungloved hand up to their face while looking at Kass in a presumptuously skeptical manner, like they didn’t believe him. However, when their fingers brushed away some wetness below an eye, they tensed. They resisted the urge to throw their hand away from their face like their fingertips had traced acid instead of water, instead slowly moving their hand into their field of view where they could examine the thin sheen on their pads. 

The look of disbelief on their face was comical, were there not drying trails of tears present on either cheek. 

“Are you okay?” Kass asked again, very worried at their incredibly strange reaction.

“I-I—“ Ahnu stuttered, talking without even thinking as they continued to stare at their hand. “I don’t—“

Kass pushed down his surprise at hearing them actually speak, still far too concerned with their behavior, though a part of him did note the quality of their voice—rough and wavering, likely due to a combination disuse and their current emotional state. Deep also, in a young sounding way.

Ahnu looked up at him, a little helpless but mostly just confused. They quickly wiped their face with their hands before handing him back his handkerchief (apparently not getting the memo that it was for that very use) with a simple shrug. 

Kass took it, but eyed them cautiously all the while. Ahnu avoided his gaze for a moment, before finally shrugging again and raising their hands to sign. 

‘I don’t think I was upset. I don’t feel bad.’ they gestured, looking up to Kass briefly, hoping that a bit of eye contact would convey sincerity. It seemed to work. 

Kass looked at them skeptically for a time before seeming to accept the answer, smoothing down his feathers (which had become amusingly puffed up in some places) and giving them a somewhat uneasy smile. Not exactly disingenuous—just not entirely reassured. Nonetheless, he accepted their statement all the same. 

“Ah. Well—hah!“ Kass began, chuckling awkwardly in an attempt to lighten the mood between the two. “I suppose music moves some people differently. I can certainly say that I’ve heard some works so beautiful I couldn’t help but shed a tear myself! Ha ha!” he added on, his following laugh sounding a bit more genuine. “Honestly, you flatter me! I’d normally think of my musical skills more akin to that of a novice!”

Ahnu frowned at his clear self depreciation.

‘No, it was very good.’ they signed, their expression indignant. They left no room for debate on the matter. 

At that, Kass gave them his soft, characteristic smile that mostly only reached his eyes. 

“That’s incredibly kind of you to say. Thank you.” he said. “I’ll keep that in mind from now on.” 

Truthfully, Kass was well aware that he was a practiced musician. Granted, many artist’s did toil over their craft to differing degrees—himself included—but Kass wasn’t exactly one to seriously put himself down. Humor was an exception, but it seemed to be an outlet that was completely lost on Ahnu, who evidently took umbrage to his cheapening of his own honed skill. A bit clueless, but incredibly charming in the way the sincerity of a child was. 

He supposed that he’d already come to the conclusion that they had more in common with children than adults. Not to imply he condescended to them, but that he tried to aptly conjure things to their understanding. They were a hard one to gauge, though. 

“Well now, as thanks for hearing my song to the end, and for that absolutely wonderful compliment, how about I treat you to a meal favored by those back at my home?” Kass asked sweetly.

Ahnu softened up at the offer, finally becoming less tense and high strung. On top of saving strangers from danger, it seemed that another running pattern of theirs was that they were hardly someone to turn down food. 

* * *

Ahnu had ventured off while Kass was cooking, intent on providing some sort of support while the Stable-hand Tolero, the one with the strange fixation on his torch, marched towards the bridge to take on the monster camp Ahnu had cleared just the other day. Partially to help, but mostly to see if what Kass had mentioned about the power of the Blood Moon to actually be true. 

Sure enough, when Tolero and Ahnu got to the bridge, there was a Bokoblin of the same caliber as the one they’d slain meandering there, as well as a nearby archer on a floating platform. They didn’t seem to recognize Ahnu, likely attributed to the Heart-mask they wore, but the same could not be said about Tolero, who the monster in front of them pointed an accusatory finger at. He really had dealt with them before, hadn’t he?

They ended up dispatching the two in a manner very similar to how they had prior, 

Simply pushing the Bokoblin ahead off of the bridge, and downing the archer with a single arrow that took out two of the floating Octoroks, making the platform go vertical. 

Tolero ran ahead, insisting that he could take out the camp on the other side of the river. Trusting that he’d done it before, Ahnu let him be, wanting to get back to the Stable to eat. They didn’t even bother to collect the dropped supplies of the pig-men that floated down the river, deciding that it would be rude to keep the Rito that had offered them a meal almost a half hour ago waiting. 

Unbeknownst to Ahnu however, was that some other creature had been paying attention to their handling of the monsters from below, down in the Hylia river where said monster's loot was now floating along with the current. A creature that was VERY excited to witness what they did. 

* * *

Ahnu happily chowed down into the spiced Meunière Kass had served them a large portion of, having quickly shoved their mask aside to get at the food the Rito handed them on their return. He didn’t exactly know how much they would eat, so he’d overestimated what he considered to be a fair amount. It turned out to be the right amount, surprisingly. 

“Oh!” Kass exclaimed as Ahnu enthusiastically ate up his cooking, his smile pulling at his beak. “I’m happy you like it! I was worried it wouldn’t be any good.” He grabbed himself a serving before adding on, “The fish I’m accustomed to preparing for my daughters doesn’t seem to live around these parts—or really anywhere outside of my home‘s region—so I had to work with the common bass.”

Ahnu looked up from their food, swallowing while they considered something. 

“Where is your home?” they asked, comfortable enough to speak aloud—and also not wanting to put down their eating utensils to sign.

Kass paused his own eating at hearing them speak, but took the question in stride despite it’s surprising delivery. 

“The Rito Village is located in the North-Western portion of the kingdom, in the Tabantha region, just beyond the Frontier.” he answered earnestly, before clarifying, “Though technically, my village could be considered to be a part of the Hebra region as well. It’s between them, with the Lake that surrounds it—Lake Totori—serving to divide them.”

Ahnu nodded along to his explanation, not really understanding any of the places he was citing, or really anything beyond the fact that this “Rito Village” was in the North-Western portion of Hyrule. 

“Why did you leave your home?” they then asked, not really thinking much about what left their mouth now that they were around someone they could sort of speak to.

Kass choked on his food a little.

“Er—“ he swallowed, “That’s—it’s—“ he stuttered some, having difficulty finding the right words that could sufficiently answer his young friend’s question while also maintaining some level of his preferred privacy. He sighed, giving up on that and quickly remarking, “—It’s complicated.”

Ahnu nodded, seeming to accept the answer. To be fair, had Kass asked them the very same question, they were certain that they lacked the level of articulation necessary to give an answer even half as good at that. 

Funnily enough, the only person unsatisfied with this answer seemed to be the Rito himself, who had set his own bowl of food down on his lap, seemingly committed to giving them a more proper answer. 

“I set off on my journey in search of ancient songs, much like the one I sang to you.” he began. “—Rather, I set off in search of the locations depicted in a litany of different songs I was taught by a teacher of mine.”

Kass’ eyes darted down to Ahnu’s hip, and this time, they didn’t miss it. Looking down at their own hip, they realized something that probably would have mortified them a week ago—their Slate was out and visible, tied to their belt. 

How long had it been so brazenly displayed to the open air? They figured that they probably exit the Shrine with it still attached to their side, and that in the flurry of events that followed and amounted to them making Kass’ acquaintance, they just never noticed.

They shrugged to themself about the whole ordeal, having mostly already made up their mind about how they now felt regarding other people seeing it, which is to say they didn’t really care anymore. 

Kass seemed to though, realizing that his drifting eyes had caught Ahnu’s notice.

“O-oh! I—“ Kass floundered some, nearly knocking his plate of food to the floor. He caught it, thankfully, and seemed to focus more on it than Ahnu as he continued. “I noticed that the object there—on your hip—the symbol on it! It’s, er—it reminds me of my teacher!”

Ahnu looked at him curiously, but without the pressure of examination. They just wondered what he meant by that. 

“Yes!” Kass declared, more so to himself. “He was a court poet for the Hyrulean royal family, and also a member of the Sheikah tribe. That symbol is the icon of his people.”

Oh. They knew that last part, but it was still neat to learn about the modern Sheikah without having to endeavor to meet one, which was an eventuality they’d like to put off a little longer. 

Kass, evidently not getting the memo that his alibi was already given credence, continued to prattle on and maybe overshare, just a little. 

“I mean, you’ve seen the Shrine near here, right?” he said, comically devoid of self awareness. He almost immediately realized this, and added on, “I mean of course you have! Hah! You came out from inside it, after all!”

Ahnu didn’t even have enough time to distantly hope he didn’t ask how they’d gotten inside, which might have led to the question of how they’d managed to get their hands on the Sheikah Slate in the first place. Luckily, Kass seemed too busy trying to tie up his own loose ends for Ahnu’s uncritical benefit. 

“You see, thanks to him, I know a fair bit about Shrines!” he said, still a little too over enthusiastic to sound believable to the average person, especially if that person were actually listening to the content of discussion. Thankfully, Ahnu was not the average person, seeing how they lacked the level of social finesse to be skeptical of his behavior and possessed just enough insight as to the nature of the ancient technology to keep up with what he was saying. 

“That’s actually why I was examining it last night. I noticed that it had changed color, form orange to blue, and when I got closer, it appeared to have been opened somehow!” he said, starting to chuckle in relief, finally satisfied by his own account of events. “Heh, that’s when you popped out of it! Quite the shock, that was.” he echoed the sentiment of their first conversation. 

Ahnu nodded along, still a little wary of the subject of the Shrine. In an effort to potentially steer the conversation away from that subject, but remain of something still topically tangential and thus believable, they set down their own utensil and (empty) bowl on their lap, freeing their hands. 

‘Did your teacher instruct you about how to play the accordion?’ they signed. If it was strange for them to have switched back to hand-speak after talking some, Kass either didn’t notice, or didn’t say anything. He seemed to be, if anything, amused at their pantomiming the playing of an accordion in lieu of the specific sign for the instrument, which they didn’t actually know, but seemed to accidentally guess correctly. 

“Oh, no. Well, at least not exactly.” Kass responded. “He preferred something more along the lines of a lute, but really any portable string instrument. He was especially fond of an old Lyre of his, the music he produced from it being a favorite of someone very dear to him.” he remarked fondly, looking down to his lap. He shook his head some, looking over to Ahnu. 

“He instructed me as to the nature of music, and taught me nearly all songs he’d created or picked up in his long life.” Kass answered. “He was well versed in ancient civilizations, and had surveyed many a ruins alongside the princess back in the day.” he added on, beginning to trail off as a wistful and contemplative mood seemed to capture him, redirecting his gaze to the speck in the distance that was shrouded by darkness, even in the daylight. “Those memories seemed to bring him a great deal of joy when he would speak of them...”

Ahnu looked at the bard, who seemed to be caught up in his own thoughts. The mentions of this “princess” had admittedly put them on edge a little, but their unease abated in light of the musician’s own ponderous attitude. In the back of their mind, they knew that logically, this had to be the same princess as...

Ahnu shook the notion out of their head. There was no use in overthinking things, despite the fact that they had a prominent penchant for doing so. They at least wouldn’t overthink things they didn’t want to—though, sometimes they couldn’t even manage  _ that _ . 

Kass, who seemed to respectively shake himself out of his own bout of reminisce, looked back to Ahnu.

“If you’ll allow me a question...” he began, immediately putting Ahnu back on edge. They didn’t really care much for talking about themself, and they especially didn’t want to address their own relationship to literally any of the thing’s Kass had mentioned prior.

Regardless, Ahnu nodded. 

“What’s the story behind that mask of yours?” he said, pointing a feathered finger to the Heart-mask that rested on the side of their head, which—likely due to the angle at which he and Ahnu had been sitting relative to each other around the cooking pot—had been ominously staring at him for the duration of the meal. 

Ahnu gaped at the unexpectedness of the question a bit, prompting Kass to laugh. 

“Hah ha! It’s just that—“ he began, still chuckling some, “when you first came to this Stable a few nights ago, you were wearing it. It’s quite the...unique spectacle. Did you make it?”

“No.” Ahnu answered quickly, somewhat relieved, before adding on in hand-speak, ‘I found it near—‘ 

what did the journals call it again?

‘Lake K-O-L-O-M-O.‘ they spelt out the name, pausing a bit as they considered something. ‘I found it in some ruins.’ which wasn’t a lie. They couldn’t exactly remember how they found the mask, but that was the gist of it. Kass seemed to accept the answer with a smile.

“Oh? Well goodness. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I found it to be quite terrifying when I first saw it in the dark!” Kass remarked with a laugh. “Hah! I nearly jumped out of my feathers when you walked past me!” 

Ahnu couldn’t help but give a slight, if embarrassed, smile in kind.

* * *

Beedle had made a surprise visit to the Wetlands Stable, just before Ahnu had planned to depart. Well, it was a surprise to them at least. One of the Stable-hands had mentioned something about how the ambitious merchant was likely the only person in Hyrule that made regular trips to every single Stable throughout the kingdom, which floored Ahnu. Apparently he’d been making his rounds within the thirteen month cycle for the last decade or so, and while his visits never adhered to an exact schedule, he was never more than a week early or late to all of the set designations on his route—which were mostly Stables. He sometimes made multiple trips to certain locations throughout the duration of his travels—visiting the Outskirts at least three times per year, which seemed to be the most out of any other—but otherwise he tended to hang around mid-to-lower Hyrule a LOT due to all the backtracking he did. Evidently this was due to the fact that he adamantly refused to stray from the established and commonly traveled paths of the lands. 

That seemed like something of a waste of time to Ahnu, but it was his life and if he chose to travel in the most pessimal manner he could, they were in no position to stop him. Considering that he’d been doing things his way for a solid decade and got along just fine by the looks of it, Ahnu could at least admire his resolve and effectiveness over his efficiency. 

They could also appreciate the fact that he was willing to buy untanned pelts off of them (kept as fresh as when they’d been skinned thanks to how the Slate stores things), in addition to a multitude of raw materials like meats and fish of varying species and standards. He even seemed to prefer being able to cure the supplies by himself, trusting his standard methods over those of a stranger, which was fair enough. It was because of this that he was happy to buy most of Ahnu’s mined and unprocessed salts as well, which he promptly put to use on the goods Ahnu had just sold him. 

He didn’t exactly comment or even care about the fact that they pulled all of these things out of their Sheikah Slate, which was maybe the only reaction Ahnu wasn’t expecting from someone. Clearly this man had seen far stranger things during his years of travel. 

That, or maybe he just assumed it was some sort of compressed, enchanted storage nicknack. Ahnu had already met the odd traveler or two that sported magically enhanced bags themselves, which could hold more items then they looked like they should be able to, so people possessing other sorts of thaumaturgically altered gear shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. 

Overall, they walked away from their exchange with the bug enthusiast some 2,000 rupees richer, which seemed like a lot to someone who didn’t have a proper handle on money yet, or didn’t know how much most things cost. Both of those scenarios unfortunately applied to Ahnu, but they would continue to remain in financial blissful ignorance up until the point that they didn't have enough money to buy something they wanted. 

Ahnu had since double checked their inventory, making sure that despite all the transactions they’d made with the merchant, they were stacked with enough food, weapons, and other raw materials to last for a decent while should they be rendered unable to procure more for a time. 

It was nearly sunset when they were finally satisfied with their preparations to set out, and they had decided to say goodbye to the Rito musician they’d since come to like, despite only knowing him for a little under a day. He was a very patient and calm person with a soft and melodic voice that was very easy on the ears, not to mention that he was just incredibly interesting—even from how little he seemed to haphazardly overshare about himself. Talking to him had actually been somewhat fun, even when the topic had been directed towards themself, though he never pushed them to share anything they didn’t want to, which was very considerate. On top of all that, Ahnu just really liked his music. 

As they walked out of the Stable, they donned their heart-mask before waving to Kass, who’d just finished up talking to the Stable-master. 

“Oh! I see you’re leaving now as well?” he asked them, unperturbed—if not slightly amused—by them wearing their...interesting mask. He wasn’t sure if they owned much else besides it and what they wore, though he could have sworn that he’d seen them wearing a red bandanna of sorts yesterday, but strangely enough he now thought of the mask as oddly befitting of them. Still weird, but vibrant and intense as well—if a little creepy, too. Ahnu’s general demeanor certainly helped detract from that last factor. 

To be completely honest though, a large part of why he’d found the mask to be a lesser spectacle at the moment could be attributed to something—rather,  _ someone _ —drawing a portion of his attention away. His eye couldn’t help but to catch the sizable figure of the unique being that was quickly gaining ground towards the Stable, seemingly from the direction the river just besides it. That made sense—they were clearly a Zora.

Ahnu nodded along to the statement, before actually internalizing the last word of it all. Too? Well, they supposed it made sense that he was going to leave at some point. After all, he’d explained to them that the point of his quest was to journey to the locations depicted in a series of ancient songs, so it was more of less the minor coincidence of the simultaneous departure that had caught them off guard, but only momentarily. 

‘Where will you be heading?’ Ahnu signed, tilting their head some while gesturing their question. It was only right after they’d asked that they realized the likelihood of them actually knowing the relative location of anywhere he went was slim to none, unless it was somewhere they’d already been. Considering that they’ve only seen a minuscule fraction of the kingdom at this point, it was something of an improbability, but they didn’t bother to backtrack on their question, figuring that they were—at the very least—successfully making civil conversation.

“Hm?” Kass hummed, looking back down to Ahnu a little too late to catch on to whatever they were signing. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, but could you repeat that?” he asked, frowning some at his own momentary dismissal of Ahnu. “I’m afraid something else caught my eye for a second.”

Ahnu took no umbrage to the inoffensive slight, happening to resonate some with plight that was getting hopelessly distracted by the slightest of things. They quickly repeated their question.

“Me?” Kass asked in kind, trying to pay attention to the question he was asked as opposed to the incoming individual—who was clearly MUCH larger that Kass had originally discerned—that was making a beeline for the Hylian and Rito. He dismissed the thought, figuring that the Zora was heading towards the registration counter just behind him, as he’d just finished canceling the rest of his week’s reservation before he’d engaged Ahnu. The Zora may be disappointed to learn that the Stable had no beds their size. 

Kass shook his head some and tried (unsuccessfully) to redirect his full attention towards Ahnu. 

“Oh, I’m heading for an area that’s relatively nearby, actually.” he said, furrowing his feathered brow in his focus, which confused the Hylian he was talking to. This time, Ahnu had finally caught on to how his eyes kept darting up and off, his notice clearly being pulled away by something prominent and likely proximate. They briefly wondered if it would be rude to turn around while he talked to them, as they normally wouldn’t care so much with most strangers, but were hesitant to do something that might negatively impact how the kind Rito thought of them. They were about to look behind themself when Kass started to ask them a question, regaining their focus. 

“Have you ever heard of a place called the Rab—er.” Kass stopped fully, now very pointedly and deliberately looking behind Ahnu. More like looking up and over their head, actually.

Ahnu DID hear the rapid footsteps approaching from behind them, but considering that they were at a Stable that was full and bustling with other people, they didn’t think much of it. Besides, if there was something on approach that posed even the slightest bit of a threat to them, they were certain that Kass wouldn’t have just idled by and let something potentially dangerous come near Ahnu without giving some sort of warning. 

“Uhm, can I help you?” Kass asked instead, redirecting his line of questioning away from Ahnu. 

Ahnu looked at Kass with their brows furrowed behind their mask for a confused moment. As soon as they registered the question was obviously not meant for them, they finally turned around to face whoever it was that had distracted Kass so. 

Evidently, that was a mistake. 

Ahnu had barely recognized what looked to be an ornate silver and bejeweled belt above the pale abdomen of a someone who was  _ uncomfortably  _ close as far as strangers went, before the very next thing they knew, they were being clasped tightly on both arms by this absolute GIANT of a person that was now crouching over them and smiling a wide and sharp tooth filled smile right in their face.

“Wah—?!” Ahnu yelped in the strangers grasp.

“ **HELLO** !” The stranger practically yelled,  _ far  _ too loud on top of how close he was to the poor masked Hylian, effectively shocking them into silence.

“Ah—ah!” Kass squawked in kind, instantly aware of how unfortunate and uncomfortable the situation was for Ahnu. “S-sir I don’t think you—“

“ **You are JUST the type of person I’ve been looking for!** ” the stranger said to Ahnu, still SO loud, and obviously incredibly excited. “I saw you! Earlier, on the bridge! Tell me, what’s your name?”

“ **Sir!** ” Kass stated with more force than he was accustomed to speaking with. When the Zora had turned his head towards him, he’d finally pieced together just  _ who  _ this overly exhilarated individual was. 

The elaborate ornamentation of several silver-plated steel bits of jewelry and armor, the adorned aiguillettes and sash, the emblem that embellished each and every portion of the comparatively scarce amount of attire that the Zora before him—rather, the Zora people in general—wore. 

This was the Zora prince himself.

The prince looked at Kass with a confused smile, very clearly not reading the situation very well. His eyes were typical amber-gold of the Zora people, with flecks of blues streaking through his iris. He was certainly a prominent sub-species of euryhaline Zora, looking to be some sort of shark-like creature as far as his laterally extended finial crests were concerned—something like a cephalofoil if Kass recalled the correct terminology. His primary scales were a vibrant ruby red color, pale spots that indicated clusters of bioluminescent cells lined his crest, and his soft scales were the expected near-white of most Zora, tinted to a barely discernible soft pink in-line with the rest of his coloring. 

He was truly a stunning individual, all things considered. Ahnu seemed to think so too, but in a less than positive sort of manner—if their shock-raised arms and generally rigid posture was anything to go by. 

Frankly, it looked like they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to push the Zora away or not, very obviously hesitant to reciprocate some form of unwanted physical contact, and instead they leaned back and away from the Zora prince. Had the prince suddenly decided to let go of them, Ahnu would have fallen backwards.

“Er, my Zora friend...” Kass said, trying to soothe the situation—specifically trying to extract Ahnu from the Zora’s clutches without having to touch either of them. 

“Perhaps you shouldn’t...grab others? So suddenly? And maybe, don’t yell?” the Rito bard gingerly suggested while gently trying to shoo the prince backwards some from a distance.

“Yell?” the prince questioned, seeming to internalize only the last statement judging by how he turned towards Ahnu without letting go of them. “Oh! My apologies!” he said, still holding the masked Hylian at arms length, and also only being marginally more subdued in volume. 

Finally coming back to their senses—having very much so checked out in the presence of something non-hostile but BEYOND uncomfortable—Ahnu became all too aware of the unfortunate proximity of the Zora that was  _ still  _ holding them. 

He was close, and loud, and  _ touching  _ them. 

Ahnu did  _ not  _ like being touched. 

They shoved the large Zora away roughly, more tearing themself out of his grasp then successfully pushing him away on account of his sheer size, though he did stumble backwards in his crouch some before falling a short distance to land on his bottom in the dirt. Turning around without a word, Ahnu sprinted away from the Stable faster than they ever had from any monster they didn’t want to fight.

They weren’t even heading in whatever direction they’d initially intended to go, and strayed away from the oft traveled path most others followed. They just wanted to be anywhere else but near that Zora. Distantly, they were kicking themself in the back of their mind for not heeding Quince’s warning from the day before, having realized just after they darted away that that individual had to be the prince he was talking about. 

_ Intense indeed. _

* * *

Still sitting on the ground, Sidon watched the strangely masked Hylian race away from him with a wide-eyed and slack jawed expression, barely catching a glimpse of the back of their black-hair covered head before they’d gotten far enough to round a hill, effectively obfuscating their form from view. He was still staring at the bend in the horizon that they’d passed, half expecting them to emerge back from over it and return to the Stable any moment, before the sound of someone deeply clearing their throat caught his attention. He looked over to the Rito that stood a short distance adjacent to him.

“Er...I think you may have come on a little too strong, my friend.” he said. 

“...Oh.” was all Sidon could say. 

He gingerly got to his feet and bid the bard adieu, heading back to the river where he’d previously meandered about for a few hours, psyching himself up for the purpose of introducing himself to the Hylian. 

The prince’s only consolation was that the Hylian had run off in the direction of the Lanayru Wetlands, where he was confident that at least one of his subjects of the many he’d asked to disperse throughout the clear-water marsh would be able to flag them down. 

Hopefully, they would take a more sensible approach than their leader. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's not how you make friends, Sidon. Unfortunate that Ahnu is rather sensitive in social situations, or they could have made another friend themself, huh? Well, there's always next time! Which is when we'll be seeing Ahnu explore the Lanayru Wetlands! Thanks for reading!


	9. Chapter 9--  Uncomfortable Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu happens upon a vast wetland marsh chock full of wildlife, ruins, monsters, and Zora that all want then to go to some place called the Inogo Bridge for some reason. Will they?

At some point, maybe only a half hour down the line, they transitioned from running away to just running for the sake of it. As per their usual, they didn’t stick to the designated roads like most people at the Stable recommended, and soon enough lost in the uncharted region just above the portion of the map named after the Dueling Peaks. Ahnu didn’t really mind that though.

It was around the six hour mark, when they’d finally managed to loose the horse-riding Bokoblins that curiously tailed them for the last hour or before getting bored and wandering off, that they bounced over a long hill that overlooked a vast wetlands. They couldn’t see much of it in the dark of the middle of the night, but they certainly did see the distant orange glow of a Shrine they were too worn out to bother with for the time being. They found the sight of the nearest bit of ruins on an islet not too far off to be far more favorable, seeing how that would be where that camped for the night.

It was only a half hour later, once they’d crossed the thigh-high shallows and rounded the small island TWICE to make sure there were no more camouflaged Lizalfos lazing about to surprise them, did they finally get a fire going and put back on their pants and boots they’d removed to avoid getting wet. They roasted some salt-rubbed Stamella Shrooms to make for a decent and very late dinner, before deciding against pitching their canvas tarp and instead sleeping just under the overhang of the more intact remnants of a house. 

Frankly, they were tired and worn out from the day, more so mentally as opposed to physically. How did one unfavorable interaction with a person manage to drain them so severely? Their reaction was embarrassing in hindsight, especially since it was in front of the Rito bard they’d come to like, but they couldn’t say they wouldn’t react that same way again were someone they didn’t know grabbing and yelling at them. Clearly, the Zora meant no ill-will—in fact quite the opposite, really—but it seemed that in the way that Kass’s general demeanor agreed with Ahnu’s social disposition, the Prince’s was conversely inconsonant. Where the musician was calm and subdued, respecting their personal space and mindful of their own feelings—the Zora was exuberant and vigorously animated, as well as hopelessly noisy and oblivious to the temperament of others. It not to say that the fish man was a bad person, so much as to imply that his personality just did not jive well with Ahnu’s. 

They almost felt bad about ditching him at the Stable without hearing him out, but accepted that they were overwhelmed at the time and that the mistake on their part was in the past. 

Sighing, they donned their heart-mask, not so foolhardy as to sleep low to the ground without some form of protection. It would offer them just enough cover to allow any passing monster to interpret them as a non-threat, and give them enough time to wake up and grab their Soldier’s Broadsword leaned against some lumber wreckage to take care of whatever thing that gets too close to investigate their sleeping form. 

Looking up through the small eye holes of the mask, they gazed at the stars for a period of time they couldn’t recall the duration of, watching the light speckled darkness melt into that behind their eyelids. 

* * *

Looking around the wetlands in the daylight proved the watery region to be a very beautiful place, full of all sorts of flora and fauna that thrived in the environment. Ahnu especially liked the sheer amount of water lilies and ducks floating about the place that gave it such a vibrant yet serene feel, and were pleasantly surprised by just how good the seeds of a Fleet-Lotus were. 

They were rendered so calm and complacent by the tranquility the wetlands inspired in them, they hardly noticed the Thunder Wizzrobe milling about the ruins until the hairs on the back of their neck stood out as if they were reaching towards the static coming off of the electro ball that was hurled at them. They dodged it in time, thankfully, and turned around to see the damned dark wizard waving at them while giggling before disappearing into thin air, leaving only the glittery burst of magic and it’s shadow behind. 

_“Don’t let it summon a storm.” she warned them. “And for the goddesses sake, don’t lose track of it.”_

Ahnu shook the Assailant’s voice out of her head. They weren’t exactly a child. It was easy to follow the glowing rings of undulation that traced along the air, rippling the light as if it were water. 

They had their Knight’s Bow at the ready when the Wizzrobe reappeared, and quickly fired off an arrow that struck it between the eyes, downing the monster-man to the dirt where Ahnu could lunge at it. It was still smiling at them, even with a broadsword shoved through its sternum. Ahnu twisted the blade, and the creature let out a shrill squeak before dissipating. 

Ahnu collected its Lightning Rod, turning it around in their hands while marveling at it’s arcane engravings that kept the bright yellow orb that was its power source in check. Wizzrobes never seemed to leave anything behind aside from their wand. 

The fact that the wizard monster saw right through the disguise of their heart mask when no others could perturbed Ahnu to no end. Well, that wasn’t exactly true, seeing how Keese and ChuChu’s could do the same—but Ahnu had always figured that to be a symptom of the lesser monster’s inherent stupidity. On the spectrum of monsters, Keese and ChuChu’s where more akin to animals of the devious nature, and were very much so capable of being tamed by the groups of monsters—like Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos—that more resembled primitive tribes of people so far in that the presence of social dynamics were concerned. 

Where then did Wizzrobes fall on that spectrum? Among monsters, were they more like animals or people?

Based on the sadistic aura they emanated and strange intelligence behind their eyes, Ahnu assumed the latter. 

The predicament also made them wonder just what was beneath the cloaks they wore. The visible portions of their limbs were pitch black, and their faces were rendered obscured either by the shroud of their hoods, or suffered the same pigmentation as their extremities and were truly featureless. The only bits of their bodies that pierced the veil of black through the opening were their glowing eyes and razor toothed smile, and the only noises the things elected to make were laughs and yelps of various intensities. 

Granted, this was only the second Wizzrobe Ahnu had felled, so their scale of observationa was pretty limited. They resolved to investigate the matter further in the future, likely as soon as they encountered another Wizzrobe in a favorably secluded environment where they wouldn’t have to worry about other monsters getting in the way. They’ll definitely find out what’s under those cloaks of theirs.

* * *

“Ah! You there!”

Ahnu looked around the area, only somewhat caught off guard by the distant yelling. 

After they’d done a sweep of the wreckage on the islet where they’d fought the Wizzrobe, looking for viable supplies or maybe even koroks, they elected to finally head towards the Shrine situated on one of the more Southern small islands via the string of banded log bridges that connected all of the major bouts of land. It was when they were crossing over to the islet adjacent to their destination that they were evidently spotted by someone. 

“Over here! Over here!!” the voice called again, over from the direction of a pond that dipped deeper than the shallow waters of the wetlands. 

Ahnu cautiously treaded closer to the pond, removing their mask to better see the individual in question who gladly swam closer to shore to meet them. She was a Zora.

“I knew it!” she exclaimed happily at seeing them take off their scary mask. “You are a Hylian, aren’t you?!” she added, looking them up and down, before concluding, “Yes, you must be a Hylian! Otherwise you’re one unfortunate-looking Zora!”

Ahnu just stared at her, not particularly getting what she was going at. Fortunately, she seemed to need no prompting to elaborate. 

“Well, your timing couldn’t be more perfect if you tried!” she said, twirling about in the water in excitement. Despite how lively she was, she wasn’t nearly as loud as the only other Zora Ahnu had met thus far, though that may have had something to do with the fact that there was a solid three meters between her and Ahnu. Speaking of the Prince...

“I was ordered by Prince Sidon to find a Hylian!” 

Ah. Him. 

“I’ve been searching nonstop! Yes, quite!” she remarked in a pointedly nonchalant manner, trying too hard to sound sincere. “I certainly wasn’t just floating around and splashing in the water for fun!” she lied, though not to Ahnu’s notice—partially due to their social obliviousness, but mostly due to how much of their mind was occupied by her mention of the Zora prince. They really didn’t want to hear about him. 

“Prince Sidon is a member of the distinguished Zora royal family.” she stated, much to Ahnu’s chagrin. The Zora woman didn’t notice on account of having twisted around in the water to point off at the unactivated Sheikah Tower in the distance that Ahnu had meant to get around to taking care of at some point. “He’s waiting at Inogo Bridge, which is on the other side of that tall tower.

She turned back to Ahnu before adding, “I do hope you’ll agree to go there and meet with him.” 

Ahnu had no idea what to do in light of her sheer expectance. This request didn’t seem to be one made with an out. Their brow furrowed at the predicament, and She seemed to notice. 

“Ah, yes... You must be taken aback by such a sudden request.” she reasonably surmised in a more mellow tone. “My apologies. For us Zora, this is our top priority right now—so I must beg you to grant my request.”

Was this issue really that serious? 

“Oh, and...if you do meet Prince Sidon...Perhaps don’t tell him I was splashing about and playing in the water.” She added, a bit sheepishly. “Deal?” 

* * *

After disengaging from the one-way conversation with the Zora named Tula (where Ahnu had never once responded to her), Ahnu made for the Shrine they originally set out to complete. A couple of Lizalfos and a puzzle later, they left the Shrine, only to immediately debate whether or not they should head back inside to camp since it was then near night. 

It was actually while they were debating this quandary did the sudden illumination of the islet and the waters around it grab their attention and pull them from the mouth of the Shrine, only to catch the tail end of a streak of light that seemed to crash into the South-West-most bit of the wetlands, around five or so kilometers away. The sound of the distant collision was all it took for them to discard the idea of making camp.

They removed their boots and pants in preparation for what would be four hour jog spaced out with intermittent bouts of sprinting, where they would only stop once to catch a Korok playing about in the waters. As the closed in on the impact crater of whatever it was that fell—it being hard to miss on account of the bright and unwavering glow that emanated from the hole—they took note of the fact that the water and sediment that filled it had long since settled, giving them a clear view of the waters contents. It looked to be a yellow, luminescent hedron or sorts, with faceted spikes protruding at all angles, just a bit bigger than their gloved fist. It was a captivating sight. 

Ahnu shed and stored their doublet in the Slate, leaving them covered only in their undershorts, their mask, their baldric and other belts, and the gloves they intended to use to handle the strange object. They didn’t want to get their clothing totally soaked, but they also didn’t want to take any more risks than necessary when handling the unknown item. 

If the strange thing had once been as white hot as it seemed when it raced across the sky, it had long since cooled in the water, which they’d felt on approach, so burning themself was likely a non-issue. Still, Ahnu knelt in the shallows and reached a gloved hand towards the glowing object. When they lifted it, they couldn’t help but notice that it was heavier than it looked—not substantially, but enough so that it was impossible not to pay mind to. A common river rock of the same mass would weigh half of what this yellow glowing thing did.

They tugged off the glove of their unoccupied hand with their teeth, gently holding it in their mouth as they reached their bare fingertips towards the evidently phosphorescent stone-like object, if it’s cool temperature and interestingly smooth but porous surface was anything to go by. They might have gotten their glove wet for nothing, but better to be safe than sorry.

While they were examining the gorgeous thing in their hands, the chill of the night air was starting to seep through their skin, and so they went to withdraw their doublet back out from their Slate. It was then that they started to wonder: would the Slate recognize the glowing object? They had nothing to lose by finding out, though the fact that it didn’t automatically de-materialize the rock-like item suggested that no, it probably wouldn’t. Sure, sometimes the Slate was fickle about what objects it would readily accept, and it didn’t always seem to correctly categorize _everything_ , which Ahnu typically rectified manually every other night or so by sorting the menus themself, but when it didn’t take to a new sort of resource or thing immediately, that usually meant that it had no sort of information on it. 

It was due to all of their contrarian speculation that it came as such a surprise to them that Slate DID recognize the thing. 

It was classified as something called a “Star Fragment.”

How strange. 

They pulled the fragment back out of the Slate after setting up camp in a large tree on the nearby shore that bordered the wetlands, and continued to marvel at it well into the morning.

* * *

It was a few hours before sunset when Ahnu had woken up and clambered down from the tree they’d rested in for the duration of daylight. They’d made their way over to the shore ruins of the wetlands that surrounded the worn-road path before it transitioned into the log bridges that ran throughout the most prominent islets of the wetlands. There, they’d found another Thunder Wizzrobe dancing above and around the long since decimated homes.

This time, Ahnu spotted the monster-man first.

Acting accordingly and maintaining the element of surprise, much to the coming deficit of the Wizzrobe, Ahnu managed to get off a shot to the back of the thing’s head, piercing its cloak and stunning it enough for its levitation magic to falter, as per the usual with the dark wizards. Also per usual, the thing was smiling all the way, even as a pained moan slipped through its sharp teeth and it’s hate filled eyes stared joyously up at Ahnu. They wasted no time pinning the monster to the ground, kicking it’s wand away and into the distant waters in the process. 

At that, the Wizzrobe’s grin finally gave way to genuine panic. 

It was the vile sort of panic, too. The kind that could almost be mistaken for a desperate creature seeking to inflict as much damage as possible to it’s assailant in order to protect it’s young, when it itself was stripped of vitality beyond repair. Were this not a creature incapable of fearing death, Ahnu truly could have mistaken it’s flailing and fruitless swipes at their masked face to be that of a despairing being at their wits and somatic end. It was that unwavering contempt that pierced the veil of it's facade of helplessness that left them steadfast. It’s eyes glowed even brighter now, though whether it was due to the dimming light of day and the dark of Ahnu’s shadow falling over it, or due to the wash of malice that began to surge behind its iris, they couldn’t tell. 

The Wizzrobe struggled against Ahnu, growing all the more incensed by the fact that it only took one of the Hylian's smaller but surprisingly strong hands to pin it’s own two to it’s chest, and that a single well placed knee on it’s robe between it’s short legs was all it took to hold the wizard-monster in place. Angry and repulsed beyond belief, the monster ceased trying to gnash it’s teeth at Ahnu in a fruitless attempt to bite their unoccupied hand that was working at trying to pry off it’s hood, and instead used it’s mouth to take in an incredible amount of air.

The piercing inhale should have been enough of a warning for Ahnu, yet in the moment when they had the monster pinned, they still hadn’t expected the deafening, shrill shriek that rang through their head.

So quickly was Ahnu stunned into uselessness, flinching and curling in on themself as the Wizzrobe slipped out from beneath them. Their mind drowned in the sudden over-stimulation, and their ears had begun to throb at the raucous offense by the time that they had to force themself to recover without fully processing the event. 

They looked up to the Wizzrobe as it raced—on _foot_ —towards the waters where it’s discarded wand lay amongst the sand and river grass that obscured it so, it’s glow hidden amongst the golden rays of the beginning sunset that made the shallows of the wetlands shimmer in every direction. The only time Ahnu had seen Wizzrobes touch the ground was when they floored one with an arrow to the head, as even when resting or catching it’s breath, the monster-men seemed to deliberately remain suspended above the earth. 

It struck them then, that maybe that’s why it coveted it’s wand so desperately, which they witnessed as it frantically combed and splashed in the waters, trying to find what was likely the source of ALL it’s magical abilities. In Ahnu’s hands, the rods supplemented little more than a destructive elemental force, but perhaps it was everything and even more to the Wizzrobe that depended on it so, and were no stronger—if not actually _weaker_ than—the average Hylian. Or at least what Ahnu assumes to be the average Hylian, considering that they had yet to grapple with one. 

They got up on unsteady feet, still woozy from bearing the brunt of an ear-splitting scream to their poor, sensitive as-is ears, and crept up behind the still searching Wizzrobe that raked the water with its own gloved claws. They examined it for a moment, curious but thoroughly unamused—if anything, put off—by it’s fixation on finding it’s wand. It really was a useless thing without the rod, wasn’t it? 

It was then that Ahnu remembered what the point of this near senseless engagement was, and why they didn’t just shove their blade through it’s chest like they had the last. Reminded now, Ahnu reached for the monster with both hands aimed at the apex of it’s hood. Getting a quick and thorough grip on its cloak, they yanked at it with all of their strength before the Wizzrobe could even register that it’d been grabbed. 

For a split second, they dragged the Wizzrobe with the cloak it wore through the air, essentially swinging the monster over their head, before the sheer force Ahnu had put into their pulling of the patterned robes finally flung the dark wizard from it’s attire and back onto the islet it had previously roamed. 

Before Ahnu could fully turn to inspect the thing that came out from beneath the cloak that soon fizzled away into nothingness in their hands, they heard more than saw the ramifications of the Wizzrobes “true” reveal—and what they heard was screaming. 

It wasn’t like before, where the previous banshee-like shriek served to disorient and otherwise hinder, being deliberately loud and proximate. No—this was a pain subdued bellow, a bit too focused on trying to breath to be of substantial volume, as if air was the remedy for it’s skin burning away under the duress of the last dregs of sunlight that stretched out upon its pitch-black skin. 

Ahnu watched, wide-eyed and slack jawed as the thing held up it’s crossed forearms to bear the brunt of the light and shield it’s face, while the rest of it’s uncovered dark flesh charred to a lighter grey, which blew off of it’s body like ash. They couldn’t believe that that THING was what a Wizzrobe looked like. 

It’s torso was too long, legs too short, all limbs thin and spindly looking. It’s head was seated on it’s shoulders with no neck to separate the portions, and on it’s face, aside from that same toothed mouth and sickly set of eyes, was a bulbous nose and a set of proportionately small, pointed ears on the sides of it’s head. 

Why? Why did it look like this? Why did it behave the way it did? How could they see through the heart-mask’s enchanted disguise, and retain the knowing sheen of intelligence behind the eyes that now bore into them from where it burned, so full of hatred. Again, they had to wonder just what this type of monster was, or more importantly, why Wizzrobes in general were like this.

 _“They chose to be like this.” she said, her vivacity lost to the somberness of the subject at hand._

The Academic’s words stuck in their head at an odd angle, poking and pressing into thoughts that were just on the edge of uncomfortable. What did _that_ mean? That they chose this? Who? 

Were Wizzrobes really _supposed_ to be that different from other monsters? Did Bokoblins and Lizalfos and Moblins _not_ choose this?

 _‘Why would anyone want this?‘_ Ahnu though in kind, as they stared down the ugly thing as it died. 

It looked like a deformed Hylian.

And after long enough in the warm glow of the setting sun, it looked like a pile of wind-dusted ashes, emanating a foul purple smoke from it’s smothering heap.

They should have just stuck to their original plan to avoid all Wizzrobes no matter what. 

* * *

The next few days were a blur of frantic exploration and fighting with random monsters, mostly Lizalfos, as they tried—unsuccessful—to busy their mind with literally anything other than the warped reflection of a stygian Hylian hiding beneath a cloak. It was actually due to this that they almost welcomed the distraction of yet another stranger flagging them down while they were on approach towards and islet just North of the Wetlands where a Shrine boldly crested a hill of thorns. 

Almost. 

“I apologize for calling on you so suddenly!” the green Zora babbled as Ahnu looked on at him, impassive behind their mask as their hands were busy wringing the water out of their jacket. “I truly am!”

His calling out to them had spooked Ahnu just enough to for them to slip off of the ice pillar they were using to boost themself up another one of those stone towers littered about the lands. Honestly, even as they sat shivering next to a fire while trying to dry their clothes while still wearing them, they were less surprised and more irritated by the fact that the Zora had yet to ask them literally anything about the ice block still present in the water near where he floated. 

“I am Ledo, a proud member of the distinguished Zora.” he introduced himself. “As you are a real Hylian, I had no choice but to call upon you!”

Again with that whole “Hylian” thing. Was it considered usual for a Zora to not know what a Hylian was so much so that it was considered difficult to recognize one on sight? Granted, Ahnu was wearing their mask at the time, but they doubted almost anyone looked at them and thought “monster?” so much as they did “weird.”

“Will you please spare me a moment of your time?“ Ledo asked.

What could they reasonably say to that without lying? They weren’t in any hurry to be anywhere else, and to be honest, Ahnu didn’t want to turn him down completely either. Just hearing him out couldn’t be that bad, right?

‘Yes’ Ahnu signed, nodding their head along with their fist, before deciding that the response sounded a tad too strict. ‘Sure thing.’ they added. Much better.

“Thank you so very much!” Ledo beamed at them, while turning some in the water to better gesture to the Sheikah Tower off in the distance. “Do you see that tower...” he punctuated by lifting a hand out of the water to point at it, “—the one atop that mountain yonder?”

Ahnu realized a bit too late that they’d just conscripted themself to the same explanation they’d received the other day from the Zora woman, albeit with a slightly altered set of directions on account of their new location relative to this “Inogo Bridge” and an assurance that there would likely be some sort of profitable reward for Them granting their assistance to royal Zora they certainly did NOT want to meet again, or at least anytime soon. They thumbed their bangle idly while Ledo continued to talk.

“That is why I am asking you to meet with Prince Sidon at Inogo Bridge, along the Zora River just upstream of here.” Ledo concluded. “I do hope you’ll consider.” 

The green Zora bid Ahnu farewell, and proceeded to swim further down the river, opposite the way he’d directed them down, likely to look for more Hylians to convince. The search really must have been fruitless so far. 

* * *

Ahnu trekked along the shore of the calm and waters that fed into the Wetlands and served as the transition area where the river became that of the Zora as opposed to Hylia, picking up lovely silver crustaceans called “Bright-Eyed Crabs” as they traveled at a leisurely pace. Occasionally, they had to flip one out of the wet sand the crabs hid in with the tip of the Silver Longsword they got from their latest Shrine conquest. 

The giant blade was rather beautiful, and Ahnu couldn’t help but marvel at it still, a full day later. Made in such a way that it’s design wasn’t all too different from the bit of jewelry-like attire of the few Zora they’d seen this far, it was easy to distinguish and denote as the craft of the water people. Being of completely metal make, with portions coated in intentionally oxidized-to-blue silver, the Longsword felt sturdy and durable in their hands, if a bit uncomfortable for its lack of cord wrap around the hilt, which made it somewhat hard to grip properly if they didn’t hold the hard metal tight enough to make their hands ache. Still, it was a gorgeously polished steel weapon, that maybe suffered some in the category of combat effectiveness for the sake of maintaining its aesthetic. 

As they marched on while collecting the pretty breed of river crab, they were nearing the crudely constructed sets of Lizalfos camps that rested over a wide and low portion of the river. They boasted a unique style of architecture, incorporating the bones of what looked to be massive water fairing creatures into the structure of their docks, sometimes as a piece of foundational support akin to the logs of wood that stretched down I to the water, but more often just a sightly protuberance that encompassed the round wharfs. There were also colorful shells strung all about the place, which Ahnu could only imagine serving as some sort of decoration. The idea that Lizalfos would bother sticking to an extensive decorative scheme was as confusing as it was amusing. 

Ahnu planned on boarding the pier encampments from a dock bridge that just so happened to connect to the portion of land they’d been steadily traveling towards, as they were eager to swiftly wipe out the population of lizard-monsters that patrolled it in order to freely explore and fish in the area. Unfortunately, there was something of an ill-timed hurdle standing in the way of that plan—or rather, swimming. 

Ahnu heard a soft “Oh!” as they stepped onto the log bridge, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise when they were flagged down by a Zora that was either just passing, or staged to patrol a route that but the water person just below the dock they walked on. It was actually quite silly when they saw the head of and black, armored Zora wielding a spear peek out at them from just under the bridge, eyes wide in bewilderment—or maybe just fascination.

Ahnu knelt down on the bridge, already resigned to the fact that they’d have to hear this Zora out too. They looked down at him through their mask, maybe just a little bit amused at the fact that they’d accidentally managed to take a Zora by surprise this time, instead of the other way around. 

The Zora studied them just a while longer before muttering something to himself, Ahnu just barely making out him saying “This is the first time I’ve seen one...” which didn’t exactly shock them, if he was talking about what they think he was. So far Ahnu was three-for-three in encountering Zora that didn’t seem to know just what species they were right off the bat. 

“Uhm,” he hesitated, “Hello?”

Ahnu waved at him in response, which seemed to inspire some level of confidence in him. 

“Oh! Uh—I’m Tottika! Of the Zora!!” he introduced himself. “Aren’t you...” he gave them a once-over from where he swam below them, fixating particularly on their strangely masked face, “—a Hylian?” 

Ah. Right. Creepy heart mask. Ahnu decided to make it easier for him and move it to the side of their head. His eyes immediately lit up at the revelation of their face, and a smile broke out across his own.

“You ARE, aren’t you?!” Tottika redundantly iterated, before continuing to dumbly state, “Yes, I can tell! You are most certainly a Hylian!”

Ahnu resisted the urge to smile at his antics, but didn’t have to try very hard as soon as he resumed talking. 

“As fate would have it, our Prince Sidon is looking for a Hylian like you!”

Right. Him, AGAIN.

“The prince is at Inogo Bridge right now. Will you consent to go and see him?” Tottika inquired. If he was expecting an actual answer from Ahnu (which it seemed none of the Zora thus far actually did), he was going to be sorely disappointed. 

So caught off guard by being put on the spot, they almost didn’t catch him trying and failing to assure them that they had a choice in the matter.

“I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to...” he said, before mumbling the completely contrary sentiment of “Though, I’d kind of like you to go even if you don’t want too...” beneath his breath, which Ahnu found a little vexing. Not as irritating as what he said next, though. 

“Hm, yes! It is decided!” Tottika asserted, seeming to have come to a conclusion in Ahnu’s stead, nodding along to his own decision. “You will indeed go and see the prince, even if you don’t really want to!”

Okay. A little rude. Also, no. 

“Prince Sidon is at Inogo Bridge,” he said, not seeing Ahnu frowning down at his annoying droning on account of turning to point to the unactivated Sheikah Tower as the other two Zora before him had, “—just over there! See?” 

Ahnu didn’t bother to turn their head, and were quite aggravated that the Zora man remained ignorant of their frustration with him. Though, they supposed that they should give him some leeway. They too lacked more social conscientiousness than they even understood. They signed, shoulders going slack in forbearance. When Tottika looked at them again, they wore a conciliated, softly neutral expression. 

“He is upstream on the Zora River, which lies to the East of here.” Tottika instructed. “You will find him near that tower!” he concluded, looking up at them eagerly when he had no further guidance to offer. When he said no more, and just continued to stare at them, Ahnu began to suspect that his level of expectation might have been somewhat higher than the others.

Did he really anticipate them to go there, right now? Right in front of him? 

Ahnu looked over at the series of water encampments littering the surface of the river, then back towards the trail up along the Zora River, then back down towards Tottika. He was still staring up at them, beaming at them with a hope-filled smile.

 _Great_ _._

They weren’t just going to ignore him and walk away, so they settled on hiking down the aforementioned trail and abandoning the path set out for them as soon as they were out of sight of the Zora. They felt a pang of guilt as he called out to them from where they’d departed.

“Hylian! I am counting on you!” he yelled.

 _‘You shouldn’t.”_ Ahnu thought, as they lifted their hand to wave without turning around. 

The thought was punctuated by the vibration and ping of their Slate, indicating that it had just picked up on a nearby Shrine. 

* * *

Torreau stood guard next to the ancient Shrine that burned orange with some sort of artificial light that mimicked a dreadful blaze, illuminating the entirety of the water-slicked rock walls that encompassed the ledge she and it occupied in the damp night air. The only factor that dimmed it’s strange illumination was the veil—rather, thick curtain—of endless rain, which limited her field of vision drastically, rendering the benefit of an expanded range of view that overlooked the path of possibly oncoming travelers granted by her elevated post moot. It also limited her hearing. 

It was because of the loud, incessant rain, that she didn’t hear the sound of something quietly making its way over to her position. It was because of the Zora being so focused on the task as hand—to remain on the lookout for a Hylian—that she didn’t notice the gloved hand of one reach up to the pedestal of the Shrine with a strange glowing rectangle clasped in it. It was because she was so weary of having been on monotonous duty for nearly half a day that she didn’t realize the Shrine had changed color until the sudden scraping of shifting metal-looking slabs spooked her out of her daze. 

Torfeau nearly jumped out of her scales before shaking off her surprise and turning, Zora spear at the ready, prepared to face down a foe that remained out of sight. It took her but a moment to realize that where the Shrine was previously emblazoned with sinuous indentations that shone like amber looked through towards the sun, it was now partially illuminated a bright blue. Hearing yet more sounds coming from it’s direction, she tasked herself with inspecting the structure at all angles, amazed to find that where there were once the segmented rows of Sheikah engraved non-metal, there was instead an alcove. The Shrine had opened!

Deciding that this was worthy of report to the not-so-distant Prince Sidon (and also because it was near time for her shift to be over and done with anyways), Torfeau disengaged from her post to seek out her leader accordingly. 

What she didn’t notice, and thus wouldn’t include in her report, was that the circular platform that normally rested inside the mouth of the Shrine and served as a lift that led down to its interior was absent, which was a fair oversight for someone who’s never seen the inside of one to make. What she didn’t and would never know now, was that had she been just a bit faster in her response to the alterations of the Shrine, she may just have caught a glimpse of the Hylian that descended upon it. A Hylian who wore a strange mask, and had been crouching low to the elevator pad, keen on avoiding her notice. 

* * *

Ahnu paced atop the Lanayru Tower, having lapped it’s circumference 124 times and ongoing. They knew this, specifically because they had busied themself keeping count instead of dedicating an appropriate amount of their mental faculties to deliberating on the obvious and unavoidable quandary at hand. 

They slowed their gait, and looked out over the edge of the Tower, careful to keep their distance from the low ridge, out in the direction of the Zora Trail, specifically where the Inogo Bridge should have been. They couldn’t see anything through the heavy rains that had never once let up in the last several days. They resumed their errant stride, just a tad faster than before. 

The rain had started on their approach to the bridge they were so very conflicted about, so heavy a downpour that Ahnu hand to depend entirely on the sensor of the Slate to find their way to the Shrine it had picked up on. They’d barely spotted, and narrowly avoided yet another Zora that likely would have put them on the direct path to meeting their prince, and managed to complete the puzzle and slip away from the area undetected by any other Zora that may have been nearby. Afterwards, they’d preoccupied themself for a couple of days with climbing the twisted trail up the low mountain that the Sheikah Tower rested at the top of, intent on activating it and dispatching a LARGE number of monsters along the way, all while they waited for the rain to die down so that they could properly survey the region they’ve been directed towards ad nauseam. So far, no such luck. 

Ahnu wished that any of the Zora that had flagged them down would have elaborated on just what kind of assistance was required of them, or more generally, a Hylian. For several people of the water tribe to have been staged doing patrols around a several kilometre radius, they could only assume it was truly as dire as it was vaguely implied to be, but that supposition wasn’t exactly a comforting factor. 

To say that they were worried about the danger would have been a lie, considering how little Ahnu ever regards the safety or state of their person in a considerable and meaningful manner. It was more accurate to insist that they were just wholly unmotivated to tackle a situation that would have required a large investment on their part, be it physical, emotional, temporal, or whatever else have you. 

They just didn’t want that responsibility to be thrust upon them. 

Kicking a basket and some fish bones off of the edge of the Tower (there were a LOT for some reason), they looked out into the downpour one last time.

Then they turned away, and jumped off of the tower in a different direction. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have ya'll seen the concept art for Wizzrobes in BOTW? Shit's wack. And yeah, no half reasonable person would journey to a second location on the whim of a few water people--especially when you have as little idea about how to feel about things as you do a sense of self. So thanks for reading! Next time, Ahnu's wandering takes them the one place they didn't want to be!


	10. Chapter 10--  Don't Know Where to Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a chance encounter with someone they'd only met almost two weeks prior, Ahnu is recommended a route that takes them the one place they didn't want to be. Thankfully, they adapt rather quickly.

It was four hours after the morning of their departure of the Lanayru region, time spent mostly paragliding over the incredibly wide Rutala River, did Ahnu find themself in an expansive lush plains that were brimming with life. It was after they’d refilled their water-skin at a spring in the small and sparse forest did they actually survey the land around them, finding it to be Teeming with all sorts of resources for them to exploit, from various types of mushroom, tons of hearty radishes, bird eggs, and just SO many deer. 

In the bright midday sun, they were practically bursting with energy and they broke out of the tree line while chasing a Stag out of the woods and into the open field, bow in hand. Ahnu abruptly halted their running to take aim at the still fleeing deer, focusing intently on their target while quickly accounting for the distance of the animal versus the impact the acceleration of gravity would have on the course of an arrow fired from their mid-range Steel-Lizalfos Bow. As they concentrated on the deer, they couldn’t help but notice how the plains were quiet save the sound of its hooves hitting the ground and the wind hitting their ear and—also...music?

Ahnu disengaged the draw of their bow, lowering it to the ground and allowing the Stag to crest a hill to escape, as they looked around in confusion. They stilled and closed their eyes to focus more on their hearing, and sure enough, they could pick out the distant melody of a tune being played by what sounded to be a strangely _familiar_ instrument—an accordion.

Could it be?

Ahnu slung their bow back to their back and took off in the direction that the sound came the strongest, which seemed to be towards a distant hill that overlooked the edge of the plains, topped with a large tree. They didn’t even have to get that far before locating the source of the noise, seeing how as soon as they made their way to higher ground, they spotted it—or rather, him. 

It was!

Ahnu practically doubled their pace at the sight of him, racing across the fields to meet the Rito bard himself, who appeared to be idly performing an upbeat and jovial song for all of the plain-lands to hear on a crop of rock that overlooked what appeared to be a Sheikah pedestal of some sort.

Ahnu, who was too excited to have stumbled upon the musician again, did pay much mind to that last comparatively trivial passive observation of theirs. After all, Sheikah technology was everywhere—but Kass was right there, right then. 

* * *

Kass saw them coming from his vantage relative to theirs, so it was no surprise to him when they waved and signed ‘Hello’ at him, but that’s not to say he wasn’t fairly shocked by just how incredibly fast they could run, or by how unexpected it was for him to see them again, and so soon since he last saw them at that!

“Hah ha! Hello there!” He greeted them, casually noticing that they wore a red bandanna instead of their mask—which admittedly made it somewhat difficult at first for him to determine just who that blur of a person was as they raced towards him. Funny how accustomed he’d become to them wearing it in the single day he’d known them. “I knew we’d meet again! Though, I never imagined it would be here...”

“Hello!” Ahnu replied verbally before bowing deeply enough that an onlooker might have thought Kass was royalty, clearly very excited and evidently not at all winded from their sprint. ‘I am surprised to see you here!’ they added in hand-speak, before continuing to wave their hands about in a non-communicative show of delight. They’d never done anything like THAT before, but then again, they’d never been this enthusiastic.

Kass smiled at their deliberate use of the sign for an exclamation mark, and found their exuberance at the encounter to be positively charming—assuming the avid but otherwise pointless gesticulating on their part properly belied their excitement.

“As am I you, my young friend!” he laughed, setting down his instrument. “I must say, I was rather worried for you after you darted off like that.”

At that, Ahnu became visibly tense, with embarrassment written all over their flushing face—although maybe that last factor had more to do with the several hundred meter sprint they just did. They brought their hands in front of themself, and nervously fiddled with their wood bangle, tugging on it’s cloth band some as they looked away from Kass sheepishly. 

“Ah, don’t worry about it.” Kass tried to reassure them, his voice going even softer than his usual mellow tone, and his eyes narrowing in a sincere sympathy. “That Zora was a rather...intense individual, wasn’t he?”

At that, Ahnu looked up at him and nodded vehemently, clearly in emphatic agreement with him. Kass chuckled at that, too. 

‘Is this the place you said you would go back at the Stable?’ they signed. ‘The place nearby?’ they added for clarification, echoing the last thing he’d told them before they, er, left the Wetlands Stable. 

“Oh?” Kass mulled over what they’d asked for a second, before recalling the events himself. “Oh! Yes! Yes it is. This is the Rabia Plains.” he stated, giving the green and flowered fields a once-over. "Quite the beautiful place, wouldn't you say?"

‘Very.’ Ahnu replied, looking out over the tall grasses that stretched far and wide. Their gaze lingered on nothing for a moment, as they admired the view for longer than Kass, who’d since returned his gentle gaze to them.

“I know a song about this place.” he asserted with his usual, friendly quirk in his eyes. His smile stretched to his beak when Ahnu turned back to look at him with their head tilted, clearly curious. “Would you like to hear the ancient verse passed down in this region?”

* * *

To say Ahnu was disappointed when Kass departed was an understatement. They weren’t exactly there for it, as he’d left at some point during their romp in the Shrine, but he’d done the due diligence of bidding them farewell beforehand. 

_“Take care, and may the light illuminate your path, my young friend.”_ They recalled him saying. It was an eloquent and kind goodbye. 

Still, some part of them still expected, or at least wanted him to be there when they exit the Shrine, only for them to have been greeted by the sound of restless cricket chirping and the cool night air. Oh well. 

They set up camp for the night under the large tree that gave partial cover to the Shrine, nestling themself between the prominent and sinuous roots that strangled the rocky outcropping the great oak rested upon. They chatted with the Korok they’d found up atop the tree (under a strangely placed rock), telling the seedling how funny it was to see the look on the Rito bard’s face when they rode up on a bucking Stag, bringing the male deer to a halt atop the pedestal, not even realizing that they were speaking—actually _speaking_ —at length with the tree spirit. 

Ahnu and the Korok giggled together well into the night about silly things and the like

They spent a couple more days at the Rabia Plains, stocking up on a magnitude of supplies via their usual routines of foraging and hunting—even a bit of fishing in a low spring to the North-Eastern portion of the land, which is where they caught sight of a distant mountain shrouded in a thick cloud cover that hadn’t once abated in their time at the grassy fields. It was roughly 20 kilometers off, so what little they saw of it proved to be unimpressive enough not to warrant their curiosity, even if it appeared to be gigantic from their vantage. They shrugged off the sight altogether. 

They did eventually depart the lush plains, heading South-West to a mountain pass that Kass and the Slate had referred to as the “Lanayru Road - West Gate.” 

_“There’s a village nearby you could visit.”_ they recalled the musician suggesting. _“It’s quite the lovely place.”_

They had no reason to not trust him (though maybe later they wonder why he hadn’t once mentioned it’s name when he gave them directions).

When they got to the crossroads, the path split off into two directions. To their left—rather, the East—they spotted the distant stone crafted arch that Kass had mentioned, about two kilometers down. In the golden rays of the day’s last bit of light, struggling to breach the several curiously smooth and rounded mountains that encompassed the region, the crumbling and overgrown structure would have been a marvel to someone not so far away to see the finer details of its weathered carvings. They turned, and headed West as he’d instructed them to do, putting the ancient and time-worn gateway to their back. 

It was a leisurely and distraction filled three-and-half hour filled hike before they found themself nearing a sparse forest that appeared to occupy the rest of the trail, in the dark of the night, Ahnu was far more preoccupied by the glow of the countless fireflies that littered the cool air than by the shadows of the approaching oaks, and found themself in the woods well after they’d passed the tree line. That’s when they’d spotted something else—a soft luminosity close to the ground, not nearly bright enough to light up its surroundings, but enough so to stick out where it hung suspended and nearly sedentary, save the gentle rocking it did when the wind picked up.

Ahnu approached it quietly, not quite cautious, but more so on account of silence being their default stride. Nearing it, they quickly realized just what it was—a flower, and a gorgeous one at that. 

It wasn’t like Blue Nighshade, that flowers glow bluer and maybe a bit dimmer but amplified on account of its multitude of blooming buds, with a prominently pleasant and sweet aroma that hung heavily in the air like a perfume. No, this flower had a gentle floral scent, and an decisively gentle white eminence that was accented by the blue on its pale petals. The also glowing anthers on the end of the many filaments that reached out from the base of its bloom, where the flowering portion met its stem, gave off the impression of a glittering aura that hung around the display, making all the more lovely. 

Ahnu knelt down to examine the flower closer, removing their gloves so that they would be able to feel the flower as they caressed its silky petals with their bare fingertips. They didn’t know what kind of flower it was, but they felt like they should have. They waited for a moment, thinking—maybe even _hoping_ , just a _little_ —that if they looked down at the flower they gently cupped their hands around, the name of it would come to them naturally, as the terms for things often did if they focused enough. This was, of course, only the case if the Academic in their head remained silent (as she had as of the late), or if they didn’t buckle in exasperation and resigned themself to pulling out their Slate, which could recognize most things that they couldn’t.

As Ahnu held their hands idly around the flower though, a far less desirable scenario played out.

Ahnu’s head began to throb, an ache that they were accustomed to, but also, their vision began to blur in pace with their heartbeat, to the point that they soon enough lost a clear focus on the glowing flora amongst their palms and the dark grass that tickled their knuckles. They tried to blink the cloudy obscurity out of their eyes, shaking their head some, but they only succeeded in exacerbating their incoming headache.

Finally, when it seemed like their vision could get so worse, they were assuaged with a clarity so sharp and surreal, their eyes watered at the sight of the bright flower, which looked practically unreal to them now—

Because it wasn’t. 

Gone were their brown hands, shaded a soft blue in the dim air— _and in their place stood a single pale one, covered in a fingerless glove and sunlight, much like the petals of the flower that now seemed golden whilst basking in it._

_“This one here is called the silent princess—“_

—Ahnu jolted out of their reverie, eyes burning and chest heaving against the tightness that restricted it so, like someone replaced the alveoli of their lungs with an overstuffing of cotton. The knelt over the silent princess now, instead of before it, their formerly lax and reverent hands that had shielded the flower from the wind now crushing it as they clasped together tightly, in a death grip.

Ahnu stayed in that position for some time, as if under the impression that whatever ailed them so would pass like a predator, if only they remained motionless and quiet. It was only when their sudden migraine began to quell did they regain the sense necessary to try and relax, slackening the pull of muscles that burned from being pulled tight beyond what the body should normally allow. They unclamped their hands, and remorsefully looked upon the remnants of the silent princess that stuck to their palms, before picking out the squished bits of the blossom from their hands. 

Getting up and dusting themself off, Ahnu continued about their trek through the thin forest, willfully indifferent on top of drained, which in addition to the gorgeous display that was the countless luminary entities that lit up the woods the farther along they ventured, made it relatively easy to ignore the events prior—or at least, they like to think it did. 

Really though, the forest was quite beautiful. They’d clearly stumbled upon an environment teeming with bioluminescent life, from fireflies, to blue nightshades, to even more of those silent princesses (which they _did_ pick, but stored away in their Slate without much fanfare). The most curious discovery, however, was the sight of an absolutely GIGANTIC thorny bud, which above all else, was the perfect deviation from their detached mood that had gone unaddressed and unalleviated for nearly a half hour. 

Ahnu spotted the pink balls of light with wings that were indicative of fairies, who just seemed to meander lazily around the perimeter of the bud, too caught up in whatever it was that fairies think about to notice the Hylian that suspiciously and quietly crouched about the ground below them. Ahnu managed to catch four of them before the rest caught on to their shenanigans and flew away, leaving them alone with the mysterious bud. 

They walked around the thing a few times while inspecting it at all angles, before finally stoping at the rise of glowing mushrooms that seemed to form some sort of ramp. They fungi may have as well been petrified, what with how difficult it was to break off a piece of their cap. They were also surprised to find that they were _incredibly_ difficult to pull out of their ground, half expecting the tiny one they’d managed to tug out of the earth to possess roots akin to a fully grown tree—only to be more surprised when they weren’t given the chance to inspect the thing, because it faded to a glistening ash in their hands. A new mushroom quickly grew out of nothing before Ahnu’s eyes, the same size as the one they’d upheaved, ready to take its place. 

Weird. 

Looking on at the rest of the ramp-like structure the fungi formed, they tentatively made their way up to the top of it, and stopped once they were within arms-reach of the bud, unsure of what to do next. They examined the green plant-like matter that made up the walls of the thing for a moment—

_“Go on,” she pressed a reassuring palm to their back, urging them forward, “—don’t be scared. Make your offering to the Great Fairy, Flower.” She laughed from behind them when they pressed a tentative and tiny hand to one of the pink, petal-like things that stretched out from the pool, rounded by hard beds of multicolored pollen and a glistening golden frame, encrusted with gems._

“Chiiild...” murmured a deep, resonant It lethargic sounding voice from within the bud, shocking Ahnu out of their trance. They retracted their hand from the verdant wall of thorns and took a step back, looking the unflowered thing up and down, half too stupefied to do anything but stare and half waiting for that voice to say something else—if it was real, that is. 

“Sweet chiiild...” it droned on. 

Okay, so it was. 

“Please...” it begged, as Ahnu leaned in closely to hear, “Listen to my story...” Ahnu waited for half a minute before they realized that the bud was actually waiting for a response, which they found to be rather considerate of it. 

“...Sure.” they simply replied.

The bud wasted no more time waiting after they’d consented. 

“I am the Great Fairy Cotera...” it stated, which didn’t exactly catch Ahnu off guard, considering the helpful bit of illumination the Academic has provided. “This place was once a beautiful spring...” it continued, “But as time passed, fewer and fewer travelers arrived to offer me rupees. As a result, my power had abandoned me.” 

So rupees were a tribute of sorts?

“I’m nearly powerless now, so I beg your help. I need rupees to become whole again.” It bemoaned, prompting Ahnu to tug their Slate off of their hip. “All I need is 100 rupees...”

Oh, that few? Ahnu had pulled out nearly all of the rupees they’d collected up until that point, which was just over 2,500. Well, alright then. 

They fished about the currency for a single silver rupee, tucking the rest away into a pouch on their belt instead of back into the Slate, and held it out to the finely manicured and jewelry covered hand that emerged from a parted seam in the bud. 

The hand quickly closed around the rupee they’d deposited, and retracted back into the bud. 

Aah... The power...” the voice murmured to itself contentedly from inside the bud, as the entire thing began to pulsate and shake. “IT’S OVERFLOWING!!!” came its elated cry, as the bud rapidly peeled open before Ahnu, a sickly-sweet smelling purple plume of thick smoke stinging their eyes closed. 

When they’d opened their eyes again, they could finally see the flower the Academic was talking about—though they didn’t have much time to marvel at it, considering that a split second after they’d opened their eyes, an incredibly large and beautiful woman burst out of the spring at its center, captivating their their attention and also splashing them with water. 

* * *

“HAHHHHH...” Cotera sighed happily, enjoying the burn that came with stretching her long since used muscles. How she _missed_ her corporeal form. She leaned herself over the mouth of her fountain and the Hylian who’d freed her, inhaling the sweet night air deeply. 

“Oh, what a feeling!” She trilled. “That first breath of fresh air after an eternity of decay... It’s just so intoxicating!”

She looked down at her cute little savior, who gazed upon her beauteous form, positively speechless at just how radiant she was, and smiled wide down at them. 

“Thanks to you, I’ve been returned to my former glory.” she beamed, bringing up a hand to rest under her chin. “And as they say—one good turn deserves another. I can help you, dear.” 

Ahnu tilted their head at that, not quite sure what she was going on about, but nonetheless intrigued by her offer.

“Allow me to enhance your clothing, dearie.” she insisted, bringing her other hand up to gesture to their pants. “It’s the least I can do for you, but I’ll need the necessary materials to do so...”

Cotera explained the terms of her enchantment magic—how suitable resources are necessary to amplify the quality and durability of certain items and bits of gear. Unfortunately, some objects and articles of attire are of just too shabby make to enhance, lest the magic she were to imbue them with tear them apart, so there was nothing she could do for anything beyond Ahnu’s trousers, boots, and bandanna. 

When the Hylian took out a, frankly, creepy looking mask from their magical little storage device that Cotera KNEW she wasn’t responsible for enchanting with expansion, she had to break the news to them that, no, she couldn’t do anything to buff up the weird slab of possessed wood. 

“Er, dear.” Cotera said, trying to remain polite. “You do know that thing is...” she pointed to the heart-shaped mask that stared her down with it's beady looking eyes, before focusing in on the totally innocent look of confusion that painted Ahnu’s face. It kind of reminded her of someone else, from a looong time ago. She really liked that kid. 

“Hm, nothing. Never mind me.” she dismissed her worry for them and the old memories with a flick of the wrist. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for that mask of yours.”

Slightly dejected, but still mostly grateful, the Hylian put the mask on their face and signed ‘Thank you very much’ in new Hyrulian Hand-Speak, and bowed to the Great Fairy, which reminded her of the Sheikah people that used to visit her so often. 

They bowed to each other and everyone else for _everything_ , whether it was saying hello, or goodbye, or thank you. It was cute to see Ahnu do. Cotera wanted to giggle at the sight, but waited until after she’d bid them farewell, and they walked away. 

_‘Huh, what a familiar kid.”_ she thought as she watched them disappear into the woods. _‘Right down to the name...’_

She paused for a moment, digging herself deeper into contemplation, before dismissing the thought altogether with a shrug of her huge shoulders, and retracting back into her fountain and world. 

It couldn’t possibly be the same kid, anyways. That person would be too old now, if not dead. 

* * *

Waking up in a tree, Ahnu clambered down to continue on their journey to this mystery village Kass had mentioned. Ideally, they would have been sleeping in the bed of an inn, but after the headache that’d gotten the night prior, on top of large distance they’d traveled, they barely made it to the end of the tree line before deciding that they didn’t want to take another step, so they climbed a large oak and nestled themself into a semi-comfortable position on the tarp nest they made in the bowl the branches formed. They had to turn off their Shrine sensor to be able to sleep, since it otherwise would have given off the occasional beep all night, proving that there was a Shrine nearby—just one that they were too tired to pursue. 

Feeling stiff, they stretched out their sore muscles on the ground for a few minutes, completely unaware of the strange blue rabbit-like creature that was watching them the entire time from the tall grass, until they finally turned to resume their traveling and caught sight of the bright eyes on it’s strange owl-like face. 

Ahnu stared at the thing, eyes blown wide behind their mask, motionless so as to not alert it. Sadly, the creature evidently didn’t appreciate the reciprocal eye-contact, and began to fail and run rapidly amok, in an erratic manner that in a normal animal, may be cause to access it as having some sort of neurological issue. Then—it darted off quickly, away from Ahnu, and disappeared in a burst of blue, glittery smoke that dissipated into thin air.

Well then. That at least confirmed Ahnu’s suspicion that the animal was of the mystical variety, if it’s unusual amalgamation of features and otherworldly glow wasn’t enough to go off of. 

They found another one of those strange creatures, further down the path, preening itself under what appeared to be a pair of freestanding poles that bore a dozen or so wood panel chimes hanging on a cord that connected the two. They quickly ducked low to the ground and moved to hide and themself in the tall grass along the side of the trail. Getting a good, sedentary look at it, they got a better look at the horn-like protrusions on it’s head, which looked more like golden wreath vines than anything else.

_“A Blupee.” he whispered into their ear. “Shoot it.”_

Ahnu was almost startled by the voice, the Archer making his first appearance since their time on the Great Plateau, but they stifled any motion that would have ordinarily accompanied the shock in order to not scare away the blupee.

On top of surprised, Ahnu wasn’t exactly sure about how they felt nocking an arrow in the direction of a creature that was clearly a spirit of some kind. That would have been like aiming their bow at a Korok, which they would never do, even with the knowledge that Koroks were impervious to many forms of physical harm. 

_“Oh, don’t give me that look. Just aim for it’s head.” he goaded them, steering the aim of their bow. “Trust me.”_

Ahnu let the arrow fly, hardly even aware that they’d removed their bow from their back. They winced when it struck the glowing creature in the face and it let out a noise that sounded like a squeak—but otherwise appeared relatively unaffected. 

Incredulously examining the blupee from a distance, they saw no signs that it just took an arrow to the face. The thing looked around frantically, before booking it in the same erratic fashion as the last, then finally choosing a direction to run and shift out of the physical realm. 

Approaching where the creature once sat, Ahnu procured what appeared to be...rupees? 

_“Surprise!” the man laughed from behind them._

They turned the few bits of currency it dropped over and around in their hand, inspecting them. Four green, two blue, and one red, so the equivalent of 34 units in total. Is this where rupees came from? Were they just the droppings of fortune spirits?

_He laughed even harder. “Maybe!” he jested._

How strange. 

Ahnu put their rupees away in the pouch where they stored the rest of their money for the time being, and continued on the trail after reactivating their Shrine sensor. A rather useless initiative on their part, considering that the Shrine was present just around the bend of the path, obscured no more by the wall of rock that was a part of the mountain. 

Approaching it from behind, they were about to climb up to its platform when they heard a rustling in the grass not too far off to the left. 

In an instant, Ahnu had swung around, and was brandishing their Moonlight Saber—towards a child. 

One who didn’t really seem to mind as much as Ahnu did, at that. Didn’t even flinch. 

“Oooh!” the child exclaimed, before adding, “What a pretty sword!” whilst reaching for the blade, softly booing Ahnu when they swiftly retracted it from the youngling's reach, holstering it away. 

“Are you okay?!” Ahnu asked, very reasonably concerned about having swung a weapon at a kid. “Did I hurt you?!” They asked, doing a quick visual sweep to confirm that no, they didn’t cut her. They already knew that, seeing how they would have felt it had their blade connected with anything, but they didn’t stop them from panicking. 

“Nope! I’m fine!” she bubbled in a sing-song voice while she swayed with her arms behind her back. “I like your mask! It’s creepy!” 

“I-I...” Ahnu began, trailing off when there wasn’t much else to say on the matter. “Tha-thank you? Why are you up here?” 

“I’m looking for my Mommy!” the little girl replied, just as cheerful as before. “She’s hiding, but I’ll find her!”

“Yuh-your...mommy?” Ahnu reached up to shove their mask to the side and look around, spotting no adult in sight. At seeing their face, the little girl’s eyes widened in delight.

“Oooh! Are you a regular old Hylian? I thought you were a Sheikah!”

“Wha-what? Why?” Ahnu asked. _Did_ they look like a Sheikah?

“Because you’re speaking in Sheikah, Silly! Heehee!” she giggled, before pointing at their face. “But you have dark hair, so you can’t be one of us!”

They were? 

Given a moment to think about it, they supposed that when she’d initiated the conversation in the Sheikah language, they reciprocated unthinkingly, too bothered by having raised a weapon against her to even consider the fact. 

Wait. Dark hair? _Us?_

Ahnu looked down at the little girl, inspecting her. Sure enough, she herself had white hair despite her youth, which they could only assume as a phenotypic trait and tell of the Sheikah in response to what the girl had insinuated. Also, what Ahnu had initially assumed to be eyes that were black or at least a very dark brown, appeared to actually be an incredibly inky red, which was weird to see on a Hylian...

But, she wasn’t Hylian. 

That’s when Ahnu peered behind the little girl, off into a secluded nest that lay hidden and sheltered amongst the round-top mountains—full to the brim with buildings

A village.

_No._

They looked at the child again, who eyed them curiously. A Sheikah child. 

**_No._ **

“Are you alright, Mx. Masked Hylian?” She interrupted their fraught processing. “Your face looks weird.”

Indeed, Ahnu’s face had pinched up into a VERY upset expression. 

“Is this...?” they whispered while bringing their hands up to clutch at their stomach while they looked out at the village again. They meant for their words to be directed inwards, mostly towards themself, but it seemed that on top of being virtually fearless, the little Sheikah girl had a keen sense of hearing as well.

“Huh? This is Kakariko village!” she answered unwittingly, before her eyes widened yet again. “Are you lost, Mx.?”

“Ah-I—“ they began to stutter, far more prominently than before. “I thuh, thi-ink—”. They wanted to rip their hair out in frustration.

Instead, they just sighed in exasperation. “Yes.”

The little girl gave them her biggest grin yet in response, and gave a small hop of excitement.

“Oh! Oh! Then let Cottla be your guide!” she cheered, extending a hand out to Ahnu.

“Cah-Cott...Cottla?“ Ahnu asked, looking around behind the girl, still finding no one else. 

“Yep! That’s me!” she exclaimed, making grabby hands at Ahnu, still motioning for them to take hers. 

Ahnu looked down at her hand. They could probably just turn around and leave, right now. Who would care if this kid ran back to the village and told the others about a stranger with a weird mask that showed up and already left? This place probably got plenty of travelers passing through as is. They doubted that one more would mean much to them.

...But. That would probably make this child very sad, seeing how excited she was to be their tour-guide. 

That alone seemed like a good enough reason (excuse) for Ahnu to take her hand, and at least be shown around.

If they were careful, then what were the chances that they’d be recognized?

Cottla beamed at them when they did, and tugged them down the trail on the mountain that led into Kakariko. With their other hand, they pulled their mask back over their face, and swiftly yanked their Slate off of their hip, Shoving it into their jacket as they were so used to doing a month ago. 

* * *

“And this is the carrot patch!” Cottla said, waving to the old man’s who tended the acre. “That’s Steen, the pumpkin man! Hi Steen!”

Steen waved back to Cottla, smiling at her and Ahnu from across the small field that separated them from the grassy path the two walked. Feeling awkward otherwise, Ahnu too reciprocated the gesture. 

If one had swapped the words “carrot“ and “Steen” with “pumpkin” and “Olkin” respectively, that would have been how she’d introduced another farmer about five minutes earlier. They weren’t sure how thorough of a tour they expected from a five year old—one of the many facts Cottla had babbled to Ahnu in their walk together—but they imagined that they probably shouldn’t be too surprised that the contents of it were either lacking in substance, or borderline over-sharing potentially sensitive information about her fellow villagers. 

As if on cue, Cottla tugged Ahnu’s sleeve, and they leaned down to hear yet another secret that could only make them wonder why this little girl was privy to such information. 

“Lasli says that he and Olkin used to date when they were her age, but they got into a big fight and have hated each other ever since.” she whispered into their ear.

This is what Ahnu meant. Who is this Lasli, and why did they think it was a good idea to share such information with a child? Unfortunately, the latter question of theirs would never receive and answer, but as for the former...

“Hi Lasli!” Cottla called out to what looked to be a young adult woman. She had just leading Ahnu over one of the village’s many small bridges, past a tree grove dubbed “Mellie’s plum-tree patch” and the two emerged further to the west end of Kakariko, back on what appeared to be the main road and relatively downhill from this Lasli person, and the Shop she was in charge of beckoning for. She waved back to Cottla just as all the other residents had.

“That’s Lasli!” Cottla prattled on, looking up at Ahnu with her usual excitable smile. “She’s my friend! And she works at auntie’s clothing shop!” 

Clothing shop? Now that sounded like an interesting prospect to Ahnu, who’d only ever had a small shirt and an itchy doublet to wear. Maybe they would visit later. 

Cottla, however, decided that she and Ahnu should visit the shop NOW, and dragged them over to it. Though, dragged may have been too harsh a word. She was a child less than half their size, so it was more like she pulled them by the hand and they reluctantly followed. 

Unbeknownst to both Ahnu and Cottla, was that the small girl’s yelling had caught the attention of more than just Lasli, as the two guards that were posted outside the entrance to the stairway of the Townhouse paid very close attention to the duo—one of whom was particularly tense.

“Lasli! Hi! This is Ahnu!” Cottla exclaimed to her older friend, pointing to Ahnu with the hand that wasn’t holding their’s. 

The woman appeared to be wearing a variation on what Ahnu had since surmised to be the average garb for that of the Sheikah, where the jinbei-like jacket was loosely fitted around the waist by an obi-esque belt that bore the icon of the eye. It was beneath said jacket that the true deviation was, as Lasli appeared to wear a lengthened version of the navy apron the lot of the people in the village wore, giving off the impression of a dress. Unlike some of the other folk Ahnu had seen, she wore no sort of pants or leggings, but did happen to sport the silk embroidered and decorated straw umbrella hat that some others did. 

“Hi!” Lasli responded to Cottla with an exuberance to match the child’s, before turning to focus on Ahnu. “And hi there, you! Always nice to see a fresh face—er, mask in town!” Lasli, to her credit, wasn’t particularly bothered by their heart mask, and followed up her greeting with a swift bow. It took Ahnu a second to figure that the words aimed at them were in Hylian-Common.

Ahnu, for their part, waved to the woman, and gave a slight bow in kind. 

“My my! You’ve already picked up on Sheikah customs so well! Heehee!” Lasli commented at the sight with a giggle. Up close, Ahnu noticed that her eyes weren’t any sort of red at all, instead a near-black grey color. Was that normal for Sheikah? They’d gotten the thought in their head that maybe red was, but when they thought a little harder about it, they realized that they had no idea—which made more sense than them _actually_ knowing considering the context of their life so far. 

“Yeah! And they speak Sheikah too!” Cottla chimed in.

That made Lasli’s smile drop.

“Oh...” Lasli’s face contorted some in concern, her brown furrowing slightly, hardly to the notice of Cottla as much as it was Ahnu. The storefront greeter eyed Ahnu a little more directly—a little more suspiciously. “They do, now?” 

“Yeah!” Cottla affirmed, oblivious to Lasli’s tension. 

To be completely fair, so was Ahnu. To them, the Sheikah woman was probably just confused as to why a Hylian would speak their language. They didn’t really have the context required to access the situation as anything potentially more problematic than that. 

Lasli looked them up and down, as if sizing them up. She was clearly tense, but all of that seemed to fade in an instant when her eyes darted behind Ahnu for a split-second. 

“Well, that’s nice, isn’t it?” she said sweetly to Cottla in Sheikah, before looking up and between the child and Ahnu, and raising her voice some as if she were then speaking to someone far off. “Oh! Hello Dorian! I didn’t see you coming!”

Ahnu turned their masked head towards the sound of quick foot-falls to see who she was talking to. 

Just behind them now stood a burly Sheikah man with his arms crossed, who looked—not exactly upset—maybe slightly disgruntled? 

“Hm?” Cottla looked over her shoulder too. “Oh! Daddy!” she cheered, letting go of Ahnu’s hand to dart over and hug her father’s legs. She then looked up at him and raised her arms ardently, jumping some as she said, “Pick me up! Pick me up!”

Her joyful embrace stoked the limitless affection the man clearly held for his daughter, if his stern glare directed in Ahnu’s direction softening into a gentle and adoring smile was anything to go by. He bent down to snatch up his daughter, and chuckled when she kissed his cheek. Ahnu felt somewhat warmed by the sight.

It was kind of ruined when the man, Dorian, resumed his glare towards Ahnu, though. They shuffled awkwardly on their feet, and brought their hands in front of them for one to rub over the protrusion of their wood bracelet under their glove. 

“Daddy, I made a new friend! I’m showing them around town!” Cottla delightfully accounted, trying to shake her father while in his arms, successfully regaining his attention and dissolving his seeming consternation. 

“Hah. I can...see that.” he said pausing for his eyes to dart back to Ahnu briefly. “But I think that it’s time for you to go home. Nap time.”

“What?!” Cottla yelled, looking up at the cloudy sky incredulously, trying to search for the currently obscured sun. “But it’s not even noon!” she cried.

“Yes, it is.” he said, before again adding, “Nap time.” He left no room for debate as he started to walk past Ahnu, carrying his daughter away.

“Nooo!” Cottla struggled some against her father, ultimately unable to squirm out of his grasp. 

“You’d better listen to your dad, Cottla.” supplied Lasli, who’d otherwise remained quiet for the exchanges between the two. “You get grouchy when you don’t have your nap!”

“No I don’t” the child whined, finally still and resigned to her fate in her father’s arms. She peeked over his shoulder as the distance grew between her and Ahnu, raising one of her small hand to wave at them despite her grumpiness. “Bye-bye, Ahnu...”

Dorian stumbled at the farewell his daughter gave to the Hylian, but otherwise resumed his pace, if not faster than before, towards his home. Ahnu waved back at Cottla. 

Now it was just Ahnu and Lasli, which was...weird, to say the least. Lasli still didn’t seem all too keen on making eye-contact (or the closest thing to it, considering the mask they wore), let alone conversation, and that was just fine by Ahnu. Not really knowing what to do, or what would be appropriate—uncertain whether or not walking away without a word was an affable option—they eventually settle on directing a polite bow towards her, and signing ‘Farewell.’

She reciprocates somewhat noncommittally, only, choosing to use the Hylian word for “Goodbye” in kind, which left Ahnu unsure about what the distinction was. 

They headed over to the offering statues out in front of the fencing that bordered the body of water that surrounded the largest structure of the Village, giggling some at seeing how they were small and carved in the likeness of frogs, the Sheikah emblem painted in their stomachs in red. They didn’t exactly have an apple to give the lone middle of the five that lacked one, as they would have to whip out their Slate to withdraw one, which is absolutely not something their wanted to do given their current environment—a smart decision in their part, considering that the lone sentry that now stood guard at the nearby wood arch was carefully and closely eyeing them. 

Ahnu remembered seeing an apple tree back up on the ledge of the mountain that overlooked the Village, near the Shrine that they had yet to activate. Perhaps they would make their way back up there now, and maybe skip this place altogether. It would be a shame that they had yet to browse the clothing store, finding it too awkward to do with Lasli standing post. It would probably be for the best though, considering how no one had managed to recognize them yet. They were pushing their luck as is...

While caught up in their dire musing, Ahnu hadn’t noticed yet another child that had managed to sneak up on them, staring at them from the end of the line of offering statues, very amused by how intensely the strange Hylian was staring at the frog carvings through their mask. When Ahnu turned their head to the side, finally aware enough that they could _feel_ eyes on them, they saw the curious kid, gazing up at them. 

“Uhm...” Ahnu wasn’t exactly sure what to say, if that wasn’t obvious enough. The last child they’d met seemed perfectly adept at initiating and carrying a conversation all on her own. “Hello?” Ahnu settled, signing the gesture as they spoke, and bowing slightly. 

The little girl, definitely older than the last, eyed Ahnu a bit warily—which was also probably more appropriate a reaction than Cottla’s, too. Speaking of Cottla...

“Uh, hello.” she replied, bowing in response, but never once taking her eyes off of Ahnu, peering up at them all throughout the action. “My sister was giving you a tour, wasn’t she? And my father dragged her away?“

That was a bit too specific of a line of speculation for a kid to extrapolate, which suggested that either this was a bad habit of Cottla’s, or that this older sister of hers had witnessed the entire event from a few minutes prior go down from a distance. Evidently, it was both. 

“Yeah.” Ahnu supplied.

“Mhm, thought so.” the little girl said, putting her hands on her hips and looking off in the far direction of her home up the incline of the town road, pouty expression on her face. “She never listens to father or Koko! Last month she gave the painter man a tour too!” 

“Oh...” Again, Ahnu wasn’t sure about what to say, other than, “I’m sorry.” whilst rubbing a loose fist in a circular motion across their chest as they bowed yet again.

At that admission the little girl, Koko (did Sheikah children just have a penchant for referring to themselves in the third person?), looked back up at Ahnu, more curious than upset. 

“You speak in Sheikah...” she more or less stated, not leaving the fact up for debate. “Are you like Miss Rola?” she asked.

“I don’t know who that is.” Ahnu replied. To this, the little girl comically brought up a palm to her face and gently smacked her forehead.

“Oh! Right!” she said, as if coming to the most obvious conclusion in the world. “That’s why Cottla was giving you a tour! You’re new here!”

She opened her eyes back up to Ahnu, and extended her little hand with a smile. 

“Oh, Koko’s been so rude! And so has father! Let me finish the tour for you.” she offered enthusiastically. “Father stopped Cottla before she could show you the East end of Kakariko! So let Koko! There are important shops here!”

Shops? As in multiple? Ahnu supposed that it made sense for a bustling village to possess more than a single venue of business, considering that there was an established population on top of just visitors like there were at Stables, where the occasion merchant would show up with a small selection of goods limited to what they could carry on them during their travels. That probably also meant that all the stores in the village had a wider array and larger stock of goods to choose from. Ahnu was now very glad that they’d stored away their rupees into the pouch on their belt, and not their Slate. 

Taking Koko’s hand, they shoved their mask to the side of their face to show her a small, acquiescent smile, which she returned in earnest. 

“Great! Let’s start with the dining area! That’s Koko’s favorite place!”

* * *

“Aaand this—“ Koko gestured to the last building at the end of the village, “—is The Curious Quiver! The archery shop that Miss Rola runs! She makes the best arrows this side of Necluda!” the seven-year-old proudly proclaimed. “Her fire enchantments are the greatest!”

Ahnu filed that information in their mind. On top of the clothing shop “Enchantment” and the general store “High Spirits Produce” this was just another one of the many places Ahnu wanted to hit up before skipping town. They might also want to visit the bathhouse and laundering station attached to the “Shuteye Inn” considering that they’d never had a proper non-River bath before. 

“Now that I’ve shown you around, why don’t you let Koko treat you to some of my Mother's favorite recipes?” the little girl asked. 

Normally, Ahnu wouldn’t hesitate to accept food from strangers, but they didn’t want to seem like an imposition to a mere child. However, the excited look and the sparkle in her eyes seemed to imply that she was far more excited to treat Ahnu than most people were to reward them for saving their lives. Though, that would mean that they’d have to put off leaving the village for even longer...

“I’d like that very much.” Ahnu replied after a slight pause, giving another small smile at Koko’s thrilled giggling. They let her lead them back to the dining area. 

Koko had just poured some vegetable oil into the wok that Ahnu had gotten a fire going beneath when the two of them were interrupted. 

“Koko.” came the deep and familiar voice of a man Ahnu had informally met just an hour ago. The little girl in question looked up to him. 

“Father!” She said happily, though upon getting a better look at her father’s face, almost all of her delight dissolved. “Uhm... Koko was just going to cook her new friend a meal?”

“Hm. Well—“ Dorian began, not leaving room for further explanation. “I need you to watch your sister for the rest of the day.”

“Oh...” Koko looked up at her father, clearly dejected. “...Okay.” she relented, putting up no where near the fight her younger sister did, likely on account of her age. 

Dorian’s stern demeanor softened at the sight, as he realized that he was likely too forward with his daughter. 

“Now now...” He moved to take a knee just before her in an attempt to get on eye-level with his daughter. “You know I need someone brave and responsible to look after your sister when I have special patrols to do.” he reasoned to her, successfully regaining her attention as she looked up from the ground she’d begun to stare at in bitter resignation. “You’re the only person in the whole village that I trust to do just that.”

Koko brightened at that last statement, taking the complement and assigned task in stride after it was uttered. 

“Of course! Koko is very responsible!” she cheered, before turning and jogging off up-road to head home, all while yelling, “I’ll go to check on Cottla right now!”

“Heh-heh! Wait up Koko.” Dorian chuckled at his little girl's enthusiasm. “You’re old dad can’t keep up with you!” he softly called as she sped off. He turned to the cooking pot to kick some dirt into the fire that was just starting to rise, effectively extinguishing it—

—While giving Ahnu a deliberate scowl. Now, there was no mask between his dark grey eyes and their lighter ones.

The man quickly turned away to walk after his daughter, leaving Ahnu alone with the barely warm pot of oil, and the distinct impression that he didn’t like them.

* * *

Ahnu found themself over at what could be roughly considered the center of the town, at the edge of a small pond where the boards of a small wooden bridge met the rock and dirt beneath their feet. There they stood, debating on whether or not to cross the dock that led over to the small isle of rock that stuck up from the pond, occupied by the only feature of the town that neither of the children saw need to explain to Ahnu—the Goddess Statue. 

They stood their marveling at it, debating whether or not to approach it for no long, that barely paid any mind to the man that came from the direction of the inn on their right, and who was now busy setting up an easel to face their opposite direction on their right, aside from concluding him to be a non-threat. 

“Beautiful, isn't it?” he said while pulling his pack off of his back, opening it and beginning to dig around inside. 

By now, Ahnu had effectively honed themself against jumping when strangers randomly talked to them, and instead turned their head to peer over at the man, who was starting to pour paints onto a platter. 

Without even looking at them, the man—who wore his hair in an incredibly poofy and erected up-do with what looked to be dyed ends, making the high pony-tail resemble a paintbrush—continued, “I thought so too, when I first arrived here. Those Goddess statues all have a certain charm about them, don’t they?” he said, pulling a couple of paintbrushes out of his pack and finally looking over to meet Ahnu’s eyes. 

Getting a better look at him now, Ahnu assessed his bizarre hodgepodge of attire somewhat incredulously. He appeared to have been wearing the Sheikah’s umbrella hat and jinbei, but not the apron-like top underneath it—though he WAS wearing some sort of similar looking tank with a cloud design—and the pants he wore were old and patchy with worn-down wooden sandals to match, very much so unlike the footwear of the Sheikah Ahnu has observed thus far. Was he a Sheikah? His hair was white outside of the portions dyed dark—but when they thought about it again, that could have just been the last bit of his former hair color that was overtaken by the white that came with age—and hide eyes were a murky blue. Though, they knew better than to tell by the eyes now. 

He walked over to the pond, cup in hand, and scooped up some water for the purposes of pigment dilution, before getting back to his feet and marveling at the statue across the waters. 

“It was the first thing I painted when I came here.” He admired the sight for a bit, then added, “I think it’s flaws make it all the more alluring...”

Flaws? Ahnu focused in on the statue from afar, but saw little amiss. They waved to get his attention, before beginning to sign. 

‘What are you talking about? What is wrong with it?’ 

“Hm?” the painter noised, taking a bit to process their gestures. “Oh, well it’s damaged.” He looked back over to it and squinted some. “Probably a bit difficult to see from here, though. Especially when the lot of it’s hidden under that bib.”

Indeed, the Goddess statue was dressed in a time-ragged bib of sorts, which looked to be a splotchy red-faded-to-salmon color and obscured the simplistic hands of the statue, hiding their posture that implies prayer. In the cloud-dim, afternoon light, the stretching shadow of the nearby buildings approached the base of the statue, threatening to overtake the hardly illuminated light grey stone. Ahnu kind of wanted to get a closer look, but settled for signing another question towards the old artist. 

‘What happened to it?’ they gestured. 

“Ah, well that’s the kicker. Don’t know.” he admitted, bringing up a hand to rub at the back of his neck. “For all I understand, the thing coulda’ been struck by lightning. All I know for sure is that it looks like someone welded the pieces of it back together with treated silver. The local’s won’t tell me anything else though.”

Ahnu had barely begun to make out the reflective web of the precious metal that extended from beyond just under the statue's bib, when what he said finally snuck in. They looked at the painter with brows slightly raised in realization. 

‘Are you not a local? Not a—‘ What was the sign for Sheikah? They’d never used it before—never had to. They closed their eyes in contemplation, managing to almost unconsciously drag up the motions for the first half of the word for “Shadow,” flicking their chin twice with their middle finger while the rest remained fanned, and transitioning into the single handed version of “People,” waving their pointer finger about their chest. ‘—Sheikah? You are not a Sheikah?’

“Oho?” he said with a small smile, slightly amused. “Did you think I was one?”

‘Yes.’ Ahnu replied, before vaguely gesturing to his attire while looking him up and down, as if to imply the reason why they’d made such an assumption. He seemed to catch on, looking down at himself in kind. 

“Oh, hah-ha!” he laughed, patting down his clothing. “I guess that’s a fair conclusion to draw, huh?” he asked rhetorically, before adding, “Well to answer your question, yes and no.”

Ahnu tilted their head at the non-answer, earning another laugh from the man. 

“My dad was considered a Sheikah by half-blood, and my mom was a Hylian.” the painter admitted. “I got her eyes and dark hair—though I guess you can’t tell anymore—” he joked, “—but I inherit his Sheikah citizenship. Though this last month I’ve been here is actually the first time I’ve bothered to make good on it and visit.”

Ahnu had no idea what a half-blood Sheikah was, but they got the general idea of what he was going on about. He was, to some extent, of mixed race. 

“Yeah, I uh, only had enough money to buy the coat and hat.” he somewhat sheepishly added. “You know, traveling and all that doesn’t leave you with a lot of money if you aren’t a merchant. You are a fellow traveler, aren’t you?” 

Ahnu nodded, before signing ‘Are those the clothes you can buy from the shop?’

“These? Well, yeah, but only if you’re a citizen of the clan. The gear they sell to non-Sheikah tourists is different.” he stated. “To be honest, even with proof of my ancestry, I had a hard time getting a hold of the bit of clothing I’m wearing right now. I may be blood, but I’m still considered an outsider.”

“These villagers never leave the safety of their village.” The painter’s head darted about and around, quickly surveying his surroundings. He then leaned in and whispered, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but travelers like us are treated with suspicion because of it.”

Well, now some things made a lot more sense. 

‘I noticed.’ Ahnu replied. 

“Hah. I bet you did. I mean I’ve been here for a month, and no one except a couple of kids ever bother to talk to me, and most of the younger adults stare me down when they do.” the painter said, turning his head briefly to look over at the guards that were far off on the other side of the town-road. Dorian had just rejoined his fellow Sheikah at their post, and both of them were staring at Ahnu and the painter. The two Hylians—rather, mostly Hylian individuals—swiftly returned to the uncomfortable safety of looking at each other instead, abashed grimaces blanketing both of their faces. 

After a moment though, the painter’s embarrassment gave way to a time-learned humility, which washed the beginnings of his flustering off of his cheeks, and replacing it with the deep wrinkles of his smile. He began to laugh at how awkward the situation was, Ahnu watching him and wishing they too shared the confidence required to do the same. 

“I can’t imagine how they’re treating you on your first day here!” he supplied, before asking, “I mean, this is your first day in Kakariko, right? Haven’t seen you around before today.”

‘Yes.’ Ahnu affirmed, before adding, ‘Hello. I am A-H-N-U.’ punctuating their introduction with a bow. 

“Pikango.“ the painter simply stated, responding with a wide smile and an even deeper bow. “Nice to meet you, Ahnu.“

When he straightened up, his eyes wandered over to the side of Ahnu’s head. 

“Say...” Pikango started, “Mind telling me about that mask of yours? Looks crazy. I love it.” 

Ahnu returned his grin, if ever so slightly.

* * *

“Ahhh!? You...you found it?! Really?!” Pikango asked incredulously, his eyes practically buggered out. “Are you serious right now?!”

As soon as night fell, the painter had begun tucking his supplies away and telling Ahnu about one of the many reasons he’d traveled all the was to Kakariko, aside from plain old reconnecting with his heritage. Evidently, he’d come in search of the Great Fairy Fountain that Ahnu had recently paid homage to, entirely on accident. 

“You’re telling me it’s been nearby this whole time?!” he asked, less-so skeptical of them than he was borderline in denial about his own incompetence. “Did I miss it on the trek here from the Twin Peaks?” he asked. 

They found it interesting that he mentioned the sundered mountain. The very one they desperately tried to avoid traveling through, for fear that Kakariko would be just on the other side. It seemed all the more absurd now that they found themself in the very last place they ever wanted to be, regardless of how careful they thought they were, having essentially looped around to approaching it from the back. 

‘No. It’s not on a map-marked road.’ Ahnu answered, trying and failing to suppress a humored smile at the comical coincidence the poor old man had endured on account of his own oversight. They pointed far above and behind him, to the mountain overlook where the Orange light of the Shrine peeked just over the rocky ridge. ‘I came from the North, down the path that leads up that way.’

"Urgh." Pikango noised, slapping the palm of a hand to his forehead in sheer exasperation. "Really wish I'd managed to pick up more of the Sheikah language in my youth. Can't imagine how quickly I'd have found the fountain if I'd been able to understand the babbling of one of the little kids here." Ahnu couldn't help but giggle when he dropped his hand back to his side, leaving streaks of orange paint down his cheek. "The older one knows a bit of Hylian herself, but she only knows how to talk about food. She's made me some before—it was pretty good."

Now Ahnu felt like they had really missed out on Koko's cooking.

"But the younger one only knows how to say 'A man! A man!'" the old artist complained. "Like, no kid. I'm a _painter_."

It took Ahnu a moment to process what he was saying, because if they remembered correctly, Cottla had told them during her tour that she didn't know any Hylian-Common, and wasnt supposed to start learing until the next year, when she was six. Then they realized what he must have been talking about—what he'd mistakenly heard as "A man" in Hylian.

'I think she was—' Ahnu began to sign, before cutting themself off and resuming vocally, in Hylian. "She was probably talking to you about her mother. _'Ahmana'_ —" they said, enunciating the Sheikah word to emphasize it's phonetic attributes, "—means _'mother'_ in Sheikah. _'Ahman'_ is a reduction of the word; it translates to _'mommy.'_ "

"Oh! That makes a lot more sense!" Pikango exclaimed. "She must talk an awful lot about her mother, huh?"

That was certainly true. Ahnu had heard enough about her during the tour as well, every other subject falling back onto the topic of the girls mother. Be it 'Mommy loves the pumpkins grown here!' or 'Mommy used to help Mellie take care of the plum trees!' Strangely enough, Ahnu had yet to actually _see_ the woman—and Koko hadn't mentioned her even once.

Then again, they hadn't been in the village for that long. Ahnu shrugged the subject off, and resumed casual conversation with the painter as he finished packing up for the evening.

Ahnu ended up roping themself into venturing back up the mountain and through the forest path to escort the elderly painter to see the fountain the next day at noon, which became just another thing that extended their stay in the Village. 

Waving Pikango off, the painter departed to retire at the inn for the night, leaving just Ahnu to sit alone under the tree near the Goddess Statue’s pond, a communal fire being their only company. Ideally, they’d prefer that there was no one around for what they were about to attempt, but considering that the guards over at the arch-way entrance to the townhouse hadn’t left—or even so much as looked away from Ahnu—in the past few hours, they eventually decided to throw precaution to the wind. 

Getting up from their spot under the matsu pine, Ahnu crossed over the pond’s bridge, to stand before the statue of the Goddess. They briefly took note of the cracks that bloomed from beneath it’s bib, wrapping around the entirety of it—just below the face—like a necklace of rubble. Indeed, they were filled with silver, treated to withstand oxidation and weathering. Most curiously, there was a single deep carving, a scratch, that aligned with the rocky chain of ruin the Statue wore, deeply embedded on either of its wings. 

A design choice, maybe? Lightning wasn’t so gentle or meticulous. If it really had been an electrical strike that struck the monument, they’d think the destruction would be a little more...total.

Ahnu brought their hands together, pressing their palms against one another and loosely interlacing their fingers. Closing their eyes, they attempted to clear their mind, which was somewhat difficult to do under the scrutiny of the Sheikah men that they could _feel_ watching them, even from all the way across the bedim road.

The soft clacking of the thousands of wood-panel chimes that were strung up all about the village began to pick up with the wind Ahnu had decided to throw their worries to, the gentle clicking becoming a loud, but still resonant euphony that washed the static out of their head, muting the world around them. For a blessed moment, Ahnu was filled with an onrush of nostalgia—that familiarity that they’d learned to despair—

—But there came no headache. Not even the faintest pulse of pain, tugging at the back of their brain and mind. The only thing that beat at their skull was the pleasantly numbing noise of the chimes, drowning out all interference between them and the Goddess. 

For a moment, as Ahnu stood across from her, they felt a safety they’d never known before now, and prayed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, Kass. Well, since they're already there, Ahnu's going to try to make their visit productive, even if they don't quite know what that entails yet. We'll see what going on next time in Kakariko Village! Thanks for reading!


	11. Chapter 11--  Kakariko (Oh No)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiding both the Slate and their identity, Ahnu decides to make the most of their time in the village--that is, as soon as it becomes apparent that no suspects anything unusual of them. At least, not the way Ahnu would expect.

Waking up early, Ahnu departed from the inn to go handle some business in town. Considering that they had until noon for the old painter they’d become fast friends with to prepare and meet up for their shared hike, they wanted to fit in as much productive commerce as they could in the meantime. They didn’t plan on coming back down the mountain with him, to stay in the Village for another day—or at least, that’s what they told themself. 

Prioritizing acquiring gear first, as they had a limited amount of money to work with and were unwilling to risk pulling out their Slate within ANY vicinity of Kakariko to withdraw and trade the multitude of resources they’d acquired in the last two and a half weeks. If the clothing here was truly as costly as Pikango claimed, then they didn’t want to show up just short of the bill for a new set of garb that didn’t itch because they could t resist splurging at the arrow shop. 

As they approached “Enchanted” Ahnu noticed that the greeter, Lasli, was absent from her post outside the store. Whether she was missing her shift, or just didn’t work at such an early hour, Ahnu didn’t know—but they were thankful either way. After yesterday, she wasn’t exactly the first person they’d want to face this early in the day. 

Climbing the stairs and sliding the door to the side, into the thin and hollow recess of the wall it was meant to occupy, they heard the distinct jingle of wooden chimes coming from just above them. Looking up, they saw a still-swaying circular arrangement of wood panels that hung near the door, likely having been instigated into motion by the dowel that stuck out of the top corner of the door—a form of alert for the staff of the shop, indicating the arrival of a customer. 

“Ah-ah!” came a voice, off from a doorway behind the counter that led to the back of the store. There was an excess amount of clattering that followed. “Just a moment, please!”

Ahnu heard a distinct crash, and furrowed their brow in concern some as they closed the door behind them. Just at they’d begun to scope out the room around them and examine the only three manikins in the store that were actually clothed, a particularly disheveled looking Sheikah woman emerged from the back, leaning on the door frame to compose herself for a moment, before assuming a brilliant smile and heading over to the front desk. 

“Welcome to Enchanted, My high end boutique!” She enthusiastically greeted them. “We exclusively stock the special garments of the Claree Collection!” 

Ahnu slid their mask to the side of their face, and quirked their head to the side at the opener she had prattled off, before signing, ‘What’s that?’

“You mean the Claree Collection?” the stocky woman asked, earning a nod from Ahnu. “Why, it's the most high-end of collections curated by me, Claree!” she replied, before adding, “I’ve personally crafted each and every item in here using my flawless fashion sense.”

‘You mean those three things over there?’ Ahnu signed, pointing to the partial manikins that occupied the left wall of the store. 

They could have sworn they saw the woman’s eye twitch. 

“Yes, well. Ah—“ she spoke in a stilted sort of manner, almost as if she were exhibiting some form of restraint. “—I’ve been, uh, pretty busy as of the late. I’m afraid that we don’t have much merchandise in stock.”

Ahnu peered behind her, off to the side, into the doorway that lead to the back room of the store. Through it, they saw rows of different variations and sizes of the usual Sheikah attire that the people around the village wore, hanging on on of the many visible wooden racks. 

‘What about back there?’ Ahnu pointed to the back room, causing Claree’s head to swing around at an alarming speed. She darted over to close the door. 

“Er—those are only for the people of this village. Same with the items on the shelves behind me! Sorry!” she explained, turning back around to give Ahnu an apologetic smile. 

‘Do you mean Sheikah citizens?’ Ahnu signed, half asking, half correcting her. 

Another eye twitch. 

“Uh...yeah. That’s what I meant.” she stated, intensely neutral, before attempting to shift back to her sweet demeanor, and failing. “If I could, uhm, ask you a question? How do you know that??” 

‘The painter told me.’ Ahnu answered. Claree just stared at them for a solid few seconds, silent and unblinking. 

“Oh, right...” she finally remarked, not exactly bitter at the mention of Pikango, as much as she was only partially processing what Ahnu said. “Him.”

Claree continued to look on vacantly, as if she were staring right through Ahnu. Upon closer inspection, her hair was a mess and parts of it were oily due to a suggested lack of bathing, and under her eyes below her pinned-aside bangs were deep, dark bags. She looked like she hadn’t slept or managed to satisfy even her more basic of needs in a LONG time and Ahnu felt no less concerned than they were when they first walked into the store. 

They attempted to ask her if she was doing okay in sign, to which she didn’t respond in any way outside of starting to sway where she stood, worrying Ahnu even more, and prompting them to actually speak. 

“Are...? Are you okay?” Ahnu asked, leaning over the counter some, ready to grab her if she fell. 

“Hrm?” Claree seemed to focus in on Ahnu a bit more resolutely. “Oh, Lasli was right. You do speak Sheikah...”

“Yes. I do—” Ahnu quickly affirmed, not particularly reassured by how off-topic she was, dodging the question—even if unintentionally. “—But are you okay??” they reiterated. 

Now that appeared to snap her out of her stupor. Her eyes widened just a bit as she jolted some, nearly falling over but catching herself on the counter. 

“Ah!” she yelped, “Yes!! Yes, I’m fine!” she added, a bit too loud. She tried to steady herself and stand up straight, clearly a bit shaky on her feet. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m...” she trailed of, unable to convince Ahnu, or even just herself. 

After a bit, she gave up on trying to correct her posture, and instead leaned over the counter, elbows braced against the dark oak, face held in her hands. 

“I’m so tired...” she finally muttered, the words mostly muffled under the press of her palms. 

“Should I leave?” Ahnu gently suggested. They supposed that it  _ was  _ early, but they made sure to arrive well within the store’s operating hours. 

“No!” Claree bolted up, uncovering her face as she extended her arms out to Ahnu. “No, no. I just...urgh...” She smooshed her face back into her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe you should...”

Claree then peeked out from her fingers to look over at the only clothed manikins she had, dressed in the only bit of gear for sale. She glared at the things, very clearly frustrated, but mostly just disappointed. 

“It’s not like I have much of a selection to sell you...” she sighed, sitting down on a stool behind the desk that separated her from Ahnu. “I’ve just been so busy lately, making the same old types of clothes for the village all alone.” She directed her gaze back towards Ahnu with a genuinely sad look painting her face. “I just haven’t had enough time to make the clothes I want to. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave...”

“Huh?” Ahnu noised, confused. They looked over to the only outfit she had in stock, then back to her. “No, I want to buy it.”

Now THAT seemed to wake Claree up, if how she straightened up in her chair was anything to go by.

“...What?” She blinked at Ahnu, genuinely uncomprehending for a few seconds. “Like...do you mean just the scarf, or...?”

“All of it, please.” Ahnu replied. “My current clothes are very uncomfortable.”

“Wha—“ she exclaimed, “—All of it?!”

Ahnu nodded. 

“Uh—wow.” Claree needed a moment to think. Thank the Goddess that she was already sitting down. “Wait. I mean, the whole collection is expensive. I modeled it after the stealth gear that us Sheikah used to use all the time before, like, a century ago.“

“Oh, um...” Ahnu reached to their side to detach the pouch on their hip that held all of their money. Their brought it up to the counter and carefully emptied the contents onto the surface, taking great care not to let any of it spread out and clatter onto the floor. “I think I have a little over 2,400 rupees. Is that enough?” they asked, looking up at her with clueless eyes.

“Wha-huh?!” Claree stuttered, staring slack-jawed at the sheer amount of money they were offering her. It was mostly a pile of silver and red, but she could see the occasional bit of blue and green rupees sticking out in the pile. “That’s—that’s more than enough! Too much, actually! The full set only costs 1,800 rupees!”

“Okay.” Ahnu replied, relatively unfazed despite how pleasant a surprise that information was to them, as they got to work separating out her payment. 

“And—and!” Claree continued, still not entirely convinced that she’d already made a HUGE sale, “That includes a free tailoring! To make sure that the clothes fit you!” She had now worked herself back up to full, genuine enthusiasm, and held her arms suspended before her in excitement.

“Oh, that’s nice. Thank you.” It wasn’t news to Ahnu that they were smaller than most people, so it was kind of her to offer to put in the work to make their purchase’s more form-fitting and comfortable. They pushed their payment towards her. 

Claree looked down at the money, still in disbelief, for a solid half-minute. 

Ahnu was tempted to ask her if she was alright again, but before they knew it, she’d  _ vaulted _ over the counter, and was brandishing a tape measure at Ahnu with the same level of proficiency that they did a weapon towards monsters. 

“Alright!” she cheered, “I’m gonna need you to undress to your comfort level, please!”

* * *

“—Oh, but the decrease in defense is such a small price to pay for the extra stealth, don’t you think?” Claree asked, a tad rhetorically, while measuring Ahnu’s inseam. She wrote the length down on the notepad she always kept on the counter specifically for the occasion of recording peoples sizes, and followed it up with measuring their ankle. “Okay! Now arms up, and turn around, please!”

Having done this countless times, ever since she was a little girl capable of holding a measuring tape straight, Claree had seen more than her fair share of scarring, strange growths, and general physiological imperfections that came in excess on people, especially the odd traveler. There were people in the town with secrets mapped on their skin that only she knew, and diligently kept, without judgement. She was never someone so unkind as to pry, nor was she so squeamish that she couldn’t handle trivial things like the odd bodily abrasion or just partial nudity in general. 

It was that reason why she wasn’t particularly disturbed by the litany of marring that covered their body as they shuffled about awkwardly to her directions. Arms and legs with so many nicks and long since healed over cuts that the tissue looked more like a unique skin pattern than the indicators of a hard life lived. A torso decorated all the same, but with the addition of the ever so slightly, almost indistinguishable, but expansive remnants of a trauma far beyond recovered (at least, physically), that looked like a bundle of tree roots growing out of their left breast that was trying to wrap itself around their body. 

The thing on their chest was more discolored than keloid, with primarily three, thick, mangled trails that stretched up to their neck on the single upper end, and downwards to their abdomen and caressing the side of their hip on the other two, before tapering off into the obscurity of relatively unblemished skin. Curiously, there truly appeared to be no point of origin for the uneven looking wound—not where the three limbs of the scarring met, anyway.

Idly, she thought of one of the travelers who she measured in the past, who was struck by lightning with little to no enchanted gear to protect her—but no, the scarring was too sinuous and widespread, the “roots” too thin and too many. Then, she thought of Cado, who once took a shock arrow to the thigh—but where the scaring was isolated enough to possibly match what she beheld on this Ahnu person, the trails of his wound were still too small, thin, and symmetrical. Not to mention, the old archer’s scar actually branched outward from a distinguishable point of entry from a foreign object, and the same could not be said for the Hylian before Claree. 

The only thing she could then compare it to were the scars of the other village guard, Dorian. His were similar to what she observed on Ahnu, right down to the seeming center of the past wound—just over the heart. In comparison, however, Dorian’s must have healed far worse that the individual before her, as his abrasion was raised and discolored beyond belief. 

Dorian never would tell her how he came to receive such a grievous wound, plenty content to have his annual measurements taken by her in silence, and being as respectful and unflinching as she was, Claree would never ask—much like how she didn’t ask Ahnu, now. 

That being said, uncritical did not mean naive. 

Of course she was just as suspicious of the “Hylian” that Lasli told her about—the one that spoke Sheikah, who Dorian saw fit to remove his daughters from the presence of. The one who her employee told her bore the name “Ahnu” of all things, as if that were a good idea for an alias. 

Even more suspicious she was now, to see them bolster an article of  _ Sheikah  _ underclothes beneath the shabby garb they wore. The material, the design and color scheme—of course Claree could tell that this was no ordinary “traveler” if that’s what they could even be called. 

As Claree now faced Ahnu’s back, in-between her transferring from measuring their waist to their bust, she covertly pulled out a paper spell talisman from her jinbei’s inner chest pocket. With the tape loosely wrapped around their chest, and Claree safe beyond their unsuspecting field of vision, she tightened her tool around them to take their measurement—gently pressing the spell to their back as she did so—

Only for nothing to happen. 

...What?

Claree stared down at the talisman she held to their nape, a little dumbfounded, and still waiting for SOMETHING to happen, only to be disappointed still. 

—Though, actually, when she thought about it, “disappointment” couldn’t be the right word. Shocked? Sure. Incredulous, considering the context and build up? Oh, absolutely. But, disappointed that this traveler is exactly who they say they are? And that they’re a genuine paying customer instead of something _ worse _ ? 

It’s a surprise, to be sure, but a pleasant one. 

In her disarray, Ahnu seemed to pick up at Claree’s extended pause, and turned their head curiously as far back as they could, spooking her some despite how gradual they were about it.

“Ah—ah! Oh, uhm!” Claree noised in further surprise, realizing that her antics had been caught onto, at least somewhat. “I just...“ She began to flounder, eyes darting around, as if she were looking for some sort of excuse hanging on the walls of her shop like the decorative tapestry. “You—you have a really big scar back here, you know that??”

Oh, GREAT. She did the one thing she always told herself she was too sensible to do. 

Ahnu though,  _ ‘Goddess love them’ _ Claree thought, didn’t seem to mind the comment on their body too much, and were actually rather intrigued. They moved their arms about so that one hand was roving the pane of their back from above and the other below, trying to feel for this scarring Claree mentioned. 

Indeed, the tailor hadn’t been lying when she remarked on the slash that graced the expanse of their upper back. Sure, it was just an excuse to hide what actually gave her pause, but that didn’t mean she was pulling her explanation out of thin air. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have paid the old wound much mind on anyone else, as she figured that what most particularly violent activities people got mixed up in on their own time wasn’t any of her business—that, and the fact that the odd traveler bearing the sign of an obvious injury dealt by a bladed weapon, always by that of a monster, wasn’t too uncommon a sight. 

“Uhh, yeah!” Claree added, quickly removing her tape measure (and the talisman) from their body, tossing both to the other side of the counter. “You must have been fought a Lynel or something, cause it’s huge! And it looks like it cut deep, too!” Claree added, cringing some as she wished that she would just stop talking.

Ahnu seemed to finally catch the upper end of the scar, which trailed diagonally down from the right side, and they frowned. They turned around to face Claree, hands lowered back down to chest level, primed to gesticulate. 

‘Does it look bad?’ they signed.

_ Oh no _ , she made them self conscious. Way to go, Claree. 

“Wha—bad?! No!” she quickly supplied, waving her hands about haphazardly. “If anything, it looks super cool! Oh! And uh, actually...” she trailed off, quickly walking over to the counter, lifting the portion of it that allowed passage, and leaving it up as she headed for the back room. 

She dug about some of her less than organized piles of unsold undergarments frantically, bumping her head on the same shelf twice as she searched about in the back room, knocking over a couple of her neater stacks in the process. It was more chaos added onto the mess of the room.

_ ‘Gods, I need some help around here.’ _ Claree thought.

Finally, she managed to pull out the undergarment she was looking for, decently sized to fit the Hylian who’s measurements she’d just taken. She reemerged from the backroom, and held out the thing on display for the Hylian she’d been so rude to—not that Ahnu had noticed. 

“Here! It’s an undercrop!” Claree declared, holding it out to Ahnu. “I happened to have one just laying about it your size, and I want you to have it! Think of it as a thank you for the pick-me-up you gave me!” 

She pushed the garb into Ahnu’s hands, not giving them the chance to finish signing whatever polite refusal they’d begun. 

“Don’t give me that! Really, you...” Claree looked over at the clothes she’d worked so hard on, only to occupy the manikins they did for the last eight _ months _ . “You really made my day, coming in here, y’know?”

She peered back over to Ahnu, who eyed her with a sincere sort of inquisitiveness, holding the undercrop close to their chest.

“It’s just, I’ve been working alone for a long time since my brother left, and…” she looked particularly dejected for a moment, before roughly shaking her head to toss out the darker thoughts she didn’t want to linger on. “—and while I love running this store...” she sighed, “I rarely have time to make the things I want to anymore. On top of that, I rarely get to curate any styles of clothing outside of the usual here in the village.” Claree admitted, somewhat dejected sounding. “Our village stopped reaching out to the others a long time ago, so aside from traveling merchants that only ever come to buy produce, we don’t deal with a lot of imports.”

Claree walked over to the freestanding head manikin, plucking the chopsticks out of it’s wig, and watched the lot of its hairstyle untwist apart. 

“I would LOVE to get my hands on literally another type of clothing, or maybe just to get some help around the store from someone else who enjoys tailoring as much as I do...” she said, clutching the chopsticks to her chest. 

Suddenly, she swung around, pointing the accessories in Ahnu’s direction, much to their confusion.

“—But YOU.” She said, her usual exuberant smile that had begun to feel less and less genuine as the months stretched on, but now fit perfectly on her face, “YOU are the reason I’m feeling so proud of my work again! So just take the gift, why don’t you!”

Ahnu seemed to consider it, and nodded after some time, before slinging the under-crop Claree had given them over their shoulder to free up their hands.

‘Okay. But on one condition.’ they proposed. 

She smiled at them even wider. “Name it.”

‘Close the shop and go to sleep, right now, please.’ Ahnu signed, concern seeping back through their face. ‘I really think you need to rest.’

Claree humphed, but she did so in a playfully indignant manner that suggested she took no actual offense to their observation and demand. 

“Fine!” she agreed in a mock-indignant tone, before turning her occupied hand over to allow the chopsticks she held to lay in her hand, still extended towards Ahnu. She reached into her jinbei to pull a hair tie out of her inner pocket (the other one) and added it to her outstretched hand. “But I want you to take these, as a sort of promise that I’ll finish your order up for you! Y’know, as soon as I sleep, eat, probably bathe too…”

‘Deal.’ Ahnu signed, taking the accessories from her. 

* * *

“Well, that’s just Dandy!” the old woman rejoiced. “I’m so grateful!” 

After departing from Enchanted—making sure to get a copy of their measurements from Claree before she closed the shop for the rest of the day in order to avoid the otherwise inevitable recurrence of them having to strip down in front of someone they felt less comfortable with—Ahnu booked it back to the general store across from the inn, wanting to hit up both it and the arrow shop before noon, when they would meet up with Pikango. With the clothing they purchased at Claree’s store not consuming the entirety of their funds, they were left with just over 600 rupees to spend, sans-caution. 

Speaking of the tailor, Ahnu sending her off to bed as if they were her parent and not a concerned peer that was likely several years her junior made it so that the adjustments she needed to make to their order had to be postponed, extending Ahnu’s stay in the town yet  _ again _ , by at least another day. That probably meant that they didn’t need to be so hasty with the supply run they were pushing, considering that they'd have to return to Kakariko after their excursion with the painter, though Ahnu didn’t seem to mind so much anymore. 

“My husband will be so happy that someone loves his carrots as much as he does!” Trissa exclaimed as she watched Ahnu shove the full dozen from the display basket into the travel pack they’d also bought, along with some of the last bit of rope she’d had in stock, some polished wooden dishes and steel utensils. “And here I was, worried we’d never sell that old leather backpack. All the travelers that come into town already have one of their own, and none of us Sheikah have much use for such things nowadays. It’s been a part of our stock for who knows how long!”

Ordinarily—so far in that one could consider Ahnu’s modus operandi  _ ordinary _ —they had no need for baggage of any sort. But, considering that they continued about in a village that they remained reluctant to openly brandish their Slate in, purchasing a backpack wasn’t a terrible investment, regardless of how temporary a situation it was. Besides, backpacks are just useful, right? Ropes too. Also kitchenware, since every traveler except themself seemed to have some on them at all times. 

They planned on storing the lot of their purchases away into the Slate later anyhow, in the safe harbor of the seclusion they’d find in the Shrine after escorting Pikango to the Great Fairy Fountain. They didn’t know if they could trust themself to keep anything fragile or easy to spoil, like a bundle of loose eggs or some sticks of goat butter, intact and fresh in their new bag—especially since the elderly shopkeeper had assured them that it had no enchantments of preservation or even those of expansion—so they settled for purchasing a dozen of the hearty root vegetables that her husband grew, adding to their collection of swift carrots. 

Packing away their freshly procured produce, Ahnu turned to inspect one of the store’s many other display baskets, and the only one with contents so fresh, they still squirmed. It was interesting to see a store selling monster parts, but Ahnu supposed that it was also rather practical, considering the widespread creation and use of things like elixirs. Even village dwellers seemed to have a use for the stuff. 

“Those are the har-hearts of [Bokoblins] right?” Ahnu asked. 

They weren’t quite sure, or even all that aware, of why they’d started to feel so at ease in this town—regardless of the uneasy pretense of their presence here and the unwelcoming demeanor of the younger generation of Sheikah adults—to the extent that under particularly comfortable circumstances, they’d begun to feel more and more capable of vocalizing. Something of a stutter persisted, making itself known at the beginnings of a conversation, but it tended to taper off quickly as communications continued, as if it were akin to the odd noises a motor might make when activated before that hum indicative of proper functionality came forth. 

Ahnu also wasn’t aware that they hadn’t used the Sheikah word for the swine-monsters.

“Hm?” Trissa noised in a confused fashion, tilting her head at their question. “The hearts? They’re Bokoblin, dearie.”

“That’s what I said.” Ahnu replied, which earned a laugh from Trissa.

“Oho!” she barked out, the facial wrinkles that indicated her age only deepening in her mirth, as she threw her head back and waved a hand about in an inoffensive dismissal. “Well, if that’s what you said, it certainly wasn’t in either of the two languages I speak! I may be old, but I’m not deaf!” she laughed some more. Now, it was Ahnu’s turn to be confused. 

It took Ahnu a moment to process what she’d said, and to remember that they knew one more language, on top of Sheikah and Hylian-Common. The language of the woman that happily illuminated the identity of monsters and objects when Ahnu’s memory—rather, the lack thereof—pulled up short. The language of the poem engraved into the blade of the saber they’d acquired two months ago, that they’d never let shatter, and now wore on their back. 

How many languages are there in Hyrule? Ahnu felt like there weren’t many, but they couldn’t be for sure. They knew of the name of at least one more—the one that the dog-lover, Quince, has told them about back at the Wetlands Stable. Was it...?

“My my...” Trissa spoke, having since calmed from her small fit of laughter. “It’s such a pleasure to meet a Hylian so well traveled so as to speak my own language, as well as that of the Gerudo!” 

* * *

It left them with only 4 rupees to their name, but Ahnu just barely managed to buy out the arrow store of its entire current stock, much to the excitement of the shop owner. 

“Kid, you’ve lifted my spirits so high I can barely contain myself!” Rola exclaimed. Evidently, there weren’t many archers other than her and her sort-of-ex-husband in the village. Outside of the settlement’s guards and the odd weapons enthusiast like the arrow-smith shopkeep, none of the local populace was particularly versed in any sort of combat outside of the martial arts. 

That fact didn’t surprise Ahnu nearly as much as the sight of this “Miss Rola” that Koko offhandedly mentioned the day prior, as even when they’d finished paying their due bill for the arrows, they couldn’t help but sneak unbelieving glances up at a woman who was distinctly non-Sheikah looking. 

It wasn’t like the general store keeper, Trissa, whose skin was similarly dark, and had hair that could have been white due to age, much like how they assumed to be the case with the painter when they’d met him the day before—but who beneath her droopy shaped eyelids, bore irises of a deep red hue. 

No, the woman that stood before Ahnu had both dark hair and clear, bright blue eyes.

Ahnu wondered briefly if maybe Sheikah citizenship was extended to those who married into the tribe of people in the village, but their thoughts returned yet again to Pikango, who bore none of the physical traits of a Sheikah, from his former hair pigmentation, to the color of his eyes, down to even the shape of his eyelids—As a fair portion of the Sheikah boasted monolids.

Perhaps she was the same? Actually, that probably WAS the case, considering that unlike the traveling painter, Rola spoke Sheikah as thoroughly as any other resident of the village. 

“Oooh! Your enthusiasm for the art of archery has got me so nostalgic!” Rola piped up, just as dreamily as before. “I even miss my husband at the moment. Just a tiny bit...

Aaand that was Ahnu’s cue to leave. 

They hoped that she got her marriage situation figured out sometime soon. 

* * *

“Oh! Hello there!” called Olkin, the pumpkin man, waving to Ahnu from across the fence and small bit of his field between them. “You’re the one that was being dragged around by little Cottla, right?”

It was noon now, if Ahnu could trust their ability to gauge the time based off of the position of the sun—seeing how they couldn’t just whip out their Slate to check the time—which was either at or at least approaching the point of zenith. In accordance with the plans they’d made with Pikango, they started their way up to North-Eastern most point of Kakariko where the official road forked into that which lead out of the town and that which had no formal route, which is where the two of them would meet up and depart for the fountain. It was as Ahnu neared the intersection that they were beckoned over to one of the village’s resident farmers.

Ahnu diverted from their path to meet him, standing on the other side of the acre’s fencing and moving their mask to the other side of his head. Olkin walked a short distance over to them as well, a single pumpkin held under his arm, and he clasped his free hand on one of the beams of the wood railing.

“Ha, it is you! Couldn’t miss that mask of yours if I tried!” he chuckled. “It’s rare to see a young person like you in a village like this!”

That was true. Ahnu had yet to observe a single individual that occupied the demographic of older adolescent like them—if they continued to run with the assumption that that’s what they were, that is. There were individuals that came close, like Lasli and Claree who were clearly adults, but a majority of the Kakariko’s “younger” population was actually middle-aged. Otherwise, this seemed to be a village filled to the brim with people who were just varying stages of old. They were certain that they’d never seen any kids other than Cottla or Koko running amok, too.

“...You...you aren’t...” Olkin squinted some at Ahnu, before jumping backwards in surprise, slightly startling Ahnu in kind. “You aren’t part of the Yiga Clan, are you?!” he asked, pointing an accusing finger at them. 

Considering that Ahnu didn’t even know what that was, they weren’t sure about what to say in response, so they just stood there, staring at him somewhat dumbly. Olkin’s faux-tense posture quickly lessened at their confusion though, a wide smile breaking out across his face. 

“Ha! I’m just pulling’ your leg!” he laughed. “You looked so serious, I couldn’t help but goad you a bit.”

...That was just Ahnu’s face, relaxed. DID their normal, slack expression look serious? But more importantly, what was this “Yiga” clan?

‘What is that?’ Ahnu signed, before they switched over to speaking, mostly to avoid having to spell out whatever he’d just said in lieu of a sign they didn’t know (or couldn’t recall), “Yah—yi-gah.” 

“Hrm?” Olkin’s jovial regard of Ahnu seemed to dim some at their question. “Ah, well, I suppose it makes sense that you wouldn’t necessarily know of them nowadays, being a young Hylian yourself...” he reasoned, mostly to himself, as he brought his free hand to idly tug at his beard while he looked up to the sky in momentary thought. When he looked back down to Ahnu, he looked stern—or at least as stern as his gentle old face could manage—as he settled on how to answer them.

“We call those who swear allegiance to Calamity Ganon the Yiga Clan. They...”. he trailed off for a bit, closing his eyes in contemplation, until resuming, “Well, let’s just say they don’t take kindly to those who would stand against Ganon. It seems they’re active again, ever since that small earthquake around two months ago.” He then pointed up to the unmarked trail Ahnu had come to Kakariko from. “Back when the Shrine that overlooks the village was activated, I think.”

Hm. Well, all of that was concerning news to Ahnu. It must have shown on their face, too, if Olkin’s reaction was anything to go by. It was such a unique bit of information, Ahnu barely registered that the older Sheikah had referred to the Calamity directly—by name, at that. 

“—But don’t worry. I don’t think you’re a part of that awful Yiga Clan. I can figure that much out just by lookin’ at ya.” he assured with a soft smile. 

Ahnu distantly wished that those younger than the pumpkin farmer shared his observational prowess.

“Please don’t hold it against me.” he added, referring to earlier when he’d been pulling their leg with his silly accusations. “Here, take this in exchange for my tomfoolery. I insist.” 

He held out the pumpkin towards Ahnu, which they gladly accepted, faintly recalling that they’d bought three of the same type back at the Wetland Stable off of a young merchant that traveled with a pack-mule. 

“Fortified pumpkins are Kakariko Village’s specialty. I put my heart and soul into every one of ‘em. They’re delicious.” he explained, clearly taking great pride in his field work. “If you want more, I can give you some, harvest permitting. I grow ‘em all year round. Just stop here by the fields and say hello.”

Ahnu would have loved to take him up on that offer right that moment, but considering that they didn’t have what they felt to be an appropriate amount of rupees to trade for any more, and also that they were struggling to shove the girthy squash into their backpack as is, they’d have to pass for the time being. Truly, a shame. 

Ahnu decided that they were close enough to the rendezvous point, and continued to pass the time by listening to the old pumpkin farmer—who was also a part time trainer that specialized in developing one’s guard, apparently—instruct them as to the ideal diet and exercise to fortify oneself in the same manner as his pumpkins. 

“-and the first step to achieving great defense is training your legs. That’s why I do at least a couple of laps through and around the village as soon as evening falls.” Olkin advised, now leaning against the fence that separated his from Ahnu. “Training is the best way to learn the secret art of defense, after all.

Now THAT really captured the attention of Ahnu, who’d since taken to imitating his relaxed posture, also leaning against the fence. 

“Secret art?” they asked. 

“Mm-hm. You know that Shrine I talked about earlier? The one up on the mountain?” Olkin pointed up to the rocky ledge above Kakariko. “Thought, I suppose you can’t really see it at this angle, but I’m sure you’ve seen it from elsewhere in the village, right?” he asked, to which Ahnu nodded. “Well, long ago, a wise master known simply as the swordsman was enshrined—right in this village, no less.” the old farmer imparted, still looking up to the cliff above. “It's said that if you overcome his trial, you will master the secret art of defense. However, no one knows exactly what this “trial” entails...”

_ ‘Some puzzle.’ _ Ahnu thought, but had to sense not to utter aloud. It could also be another test of strength, which Ahnu had only dealt with twice, now. 

“That is why I must stay vigilant with my training,” Olkin added in earnest, “—so that I am ready whenever this trial presents itself to me!”

Ahnu felt a little guilty at that last statement of his, as they bowed to him in bidding farewell. They weren’t exactly sure if people could enter Shrines after they’d already opened them and completed the task within, since the lift activated automatically when it sensed pressure—but if others _ could _ , the pumpkin man would be very disappointed if he were to ever enter the empty chamber, with no swordsman to greet him. 

They went to greet the painter, Pikango, who was on approach to the agreed point of meeting, and the two set off for the Great Fairy Fountain. 

* * *

“This...is the Great Fairy Fountain?” Pikango said in disbelief, but not exactly the kind that sounded particularly blown away. 

Just over an hour and a half into his and Ahnu’s trek together, the poor old painter's knees finally began acting their age after nothing but extended inclined hiking. Knowing that the two of them were just past the last bit of hill that they’d need to walk, Ahnu relented—thought mostly to themself, as Pikango wasn’t so imposing as to ask of them such a feat—and carried the man the rest of the way to the sight, leaving both of their bags behind in some tall grass, and moving much faster than the painters middling pace. 

“It’s certainly beautiful, but...I thought it would be more...sacred and elegant.” Pikango added after a time. 

Ahnu wasn’t all too irritated at his reaction, more or less feeling the same way now that they’d returned to the location to get a less than sudden and emotionally infused look at it. The juxtaposition of it’s presence in the serene forest was more jarring than anything else, and while Ahnu still liked it, they could see how it might be underwhelming to someone who’d been building up the idea of it in their head for a solid month. 

“The Great Fairy is a lot more beautiful than the Fountian.” Ahnu told him, offering a potential consolation for the journey.

“Oh, really?” Pikango asked, getting a nod from Ahnu in response. “Well, how do we summon her?”

“Rupee offerings.” They answered. Ahnu wasn’t about to call upon Cotera when they didn’t possess anything new to enhance, not wanting to waste her time with the triviality of showing her to off to another Hylian. That felt a bit too exploitative for their comfort, so they figured that it would be less rude to call upon her to make a monetary donation. 

“Oh, well, uh...” The painter rubbed at the back of his neck sheepishly, “I spent practically all of my money on the Sheikah clothes I’m wearing. I think my offering would be a little...offensively small.”

Ahnu shrugged, before replying “I have four rupees. Spent all mine on clothes, carrots, and arrows.”

“Huh. Oh well.” Pikango dismissed. “Another time then.”

* * *

So, Olkin wasn’t wasn’t wrong. 

Ahnu knew they were in for something strange when they entered the Shrine, only to be met with complete  _ silence _ .

No greeting, no introduction, no claimed offering “in the name of the Goddess Hylia.” Nothing. 

Walking beyond the threshold of the lift’s energy field, Ahnu noted two chests, one on either side of them, just waiting there with no pretense of a puzzle required to be partially solved for them to be acquired, which was  _ beyond  _ suspicious. It indicated to Ahnu that these were items intended to be used  _ for  _ the Shrine’s trial, instead of rewarded to them for their progress throughout. 

When they looked about the rest of the Shrine, they noted little more than the square-shapes hole in the floor, usually indicative of a tiny, benevolent training guardian that they were meant to fight. Usually, the arena was contained in a chamber pointedly separated from that Ahnu would enter, giving them the option to opt out of the Shrine altogether and return to the lift—which they’ve never done—as bars fell to close of the exit behind them when they entered the larger, conjoined room. Instead, Ahnu was deposited directly into said chamber, which left them with the impression that upon stepping forward a fair bit, the trial would begin. 

In the left chest, they found an impressively sharp, single-edged blade of a unique style that had a curious cue on the base of it’s folded steel, branching out from the tsuba, and a familiar weight and feel to it when they held it in their hand. In the right, they procured a lightweight, interestingly shaped, beautifully crafted wooden shield—embellished with the eye of all things.

Again, they looked over to the center of the room, and the barred gateway just beyond it. 

Pulling out the styling chopsticks and hairband Claree had given them, Ahnu swiftly did up their hair with the tools. The tailor had been so surprised when the Hylian had managed to do so with no help on her part, back when she’d offered to teach them how to style their hair like a Sheikah before she went and crashed for the rest of the day. Of course, Ahnu didn’t exactly style their hair as the reclusive village people would, their bun being higher up on their head, seemingly held in place by gravity just as much as the accessories that stuck out at a more diagonal angle than the horizontal of the style Claree and every other Sheikah bore. 

It came to them more naturally, as the action of it resembled how they felt the first time they’d taken a tree branch as a weapon—like they finally had a tool befitting of some unfounded reflex they had only just tested for the first time. Also, the style just so happened to suit the physical traits of their hair better, what with their hair type differing from the smooth and straight sort of the Sheikah people. 

With their hair tied up, their newest weapons donned—and their bag, jacket, and Slate put aside by the lift—Ahnu stepped forward.

As they expected, from the pit in the floor ahead, up rose the smaller, less malevolent form of guardian. It wielded a single guardian sword, but most notably, where the chassis of all autonomous machines were of a dark sort, the creation before them was colored a foggy white. The coating of pigment looked a bit splotchy in some places, and the guardian bore many thin scratches along its husk—most notably, three to the right side of its eye, where the ebony of it’s true material of make peeked through. 

It suggested use of some kind; that maybe time wasn’t the only thing wearing down the coloring of the tiny machination. When Ahnu looked at it now, and thought back to the two Tests of Strength they’d experienced thus far, they realized that they’d never devoted a lot of thought to the possible reality of the missing limbs they had, as the ones in the prior trials had a varying amount. Looking on at the white guardian’s visibly absent one, which maybe once could have held a shield or even another weapon, they focused in on the errant sparks it bore in the stead of anything useful—because all appendages aside from the one had been removed, likely without much care, if the blatant energy leakage was anything to go by. 

Damage? Or Desperation? Was this automaton a well used tool, or one that was disregarded until the implementation of it became necessary for some unknown reason?

At this, their head began to hurt. It was that familiar sort of ache, the one that scraped at the base of their skull as time dragged on. They clutched the hilt of their new blade and the hold of their new shield tightly, bringing the weapons in, closer to their body. They began to curl in on themself, still standing, as if they could squeeze the oncoming pain out of their body if every muscle were pulled tight and tense enough. 

Even now, they weren’t sure of how to brace themself against the migraines. They weren’t sure if they even  _ could _ . 

They hadn’t even noticed that the Swordsman had finally touched their mind, and began to instruct them. 

They also hadn’t noticed how the monk’s voice was drowned out—overlapped—by one far more familiar than it. 

_ “Today, we’ll be using an Eightfold Blade and a Shield of the Mind’s Eye for our lesson.” came her smooth voice. “These are the material weapons made in the same style as those passed through the tribe for generations uncountable.” _

She sounded calmer, more patient than usual. Kinder, even—like she was speaking to a child. 

_ “I will introduce you to the secret arts, passed down by the Swordsman that now watches over us all.” she supplied, bringing up her own weapons in kind. “We will practice until you can perform them successfully, just over half of the time. Then, I’ll leave the rest up to you, so you can hone your skills over time.” _

Usually, when she spoke, she was never no meticulous—so in depth. She was also never in front of them, so, SO clearly. 

They’d caught glimpses of her, usually just a hand that was already rescinding into the fog of obscurity that clouded the rest of her visage, maybe even sometimes what looked to be her back as she walked away.

A back that had always been clothed in what Ahnu now recognized to be the stealth gear of the Sheikah. Mostly. The scarf didn’t look quite right. 

_ “We begin with posture.” She said, bringing her shield up to eclipse the lower portion of her already masked face. “You know the drill. Shield up, front, and just off-center. Leave room for your sword. Keep your stance wide and body low to the ground.” _

Ahnu mimicked her, only  _ somewhat  _ unwittingly. 

_ “That’s it.” she remarked, maybe,  _ **_almost_ ** _ , fondly.  _

Had the Assailant ever been so tender before now?

_ “Now these techniques are simple in principle.” she assured, gently, even. “I’ll give you the basic rundown, you’ll practice on me, and we’ll work together until sundown, alright? It’ll be the usual.” _

Ahnu didn’t  _ know  _ what the “usual” meant—even if their body _ did _ .

_ “Don’t worry...” she spoke, softer than ever, as the crinkles of an obscured smile made themself known in her dark brown skin, as the corners of bright red eyes, hooded by a double-lid, were gleaming at them—with care and adoration. A strand of her curly, almost kinky white hair, strayed from the parted lot that hung out from under her headwrap. “I’ll go easy on you—in fact—“ she shook her own shield off of her arm, “—only a blade for me.” _

Ahnu gripped their own, just a bit tighter. 

_ “Now,” she began, “—we’ll start with something called the side hop.” _

* * *

They weren’t sure when her form faded back into that of the guardian-turned-training dummy.

They weren’t sure when her voice melded back into that of the Swordsman, enshrined above Kakariko, oh so long ago. 

They weren’t sure of the blessing the monk had given them, or them the monk. 

All they knew, was that it  _ was  _ sundown when they left the Shrine, having concluded their training—even if only by the virtue of coincidence. 

* * *

When Ahnu emerged from the Shrine, they sat atop it's platform for an hour or so, just thinking. 

A potentially dangerous habit for them—if the remnants of maybe the largest migraine they’ve yet to endure were anything to go by—but they did so all the same. 

Still and insensate— _ when was the last time they’d felt like that? _ —they chose to sit facing the direction they knew the Castle to be. They couldn’t see it, of course. It was too far away, too shrouded by the particulate in the atmosphere. Even then, if such weren’t a factor, it would have appeared to them as less than a speck of itself, morphing into the darkness of the night’s sky. With the scope of their Slate, they might have been able to see it better, but that’s not what they were aiming for, staring in the direction they were, with Kakariko to their back. 

It took them a while to process what they’d just experienced, their mind clearly hindered by their detached, if solemn, attitude. The skills that they’d just acquired—or reacquired? They weren’t sure—were beyond incredible in nature. 

Ahnu had already suspected that maybe, just maybe, they had a repressed bit of skill knocking around in their relatively empty head. The fact that they knew how to wield any given weapon that they’d come across, ever since they’d first stepped into the morning light outside of the Shrine of Resurrection, should have been an obvious tell in hindsight. Granted, they lacked any sort of self-awareness back then, almost three months ago (had it really been only that long? It felt like a lifetime ago), but still. 

_ ‘It’s ridiculous.’ _ they think, as someone who still lacks a defined sense of self.  _ ‘How little I knew.’ _ And still, don’t know. Still won’t. 

They’d always perceived the movements of most enemies as sluggish and lacking, which they’d always attributed to the perceived low intelligence and skill of monsters in general—never once had they considered the possibility that they were looking through eyes still acutely honed to a superior level and speed of action, with a body lined with muscles fit to match in incredible movement that came so naturally to them, even if they’d forgotten they’d possessed such attributes. 

Their body remembered, even if they couldn’t (didn’t).

They thought back to how time slowed, or at least seemed to, every time they spotted or made way for an opening on the pale guardian. How, as they slashed away at it, they couldn’t help but think that it felt  _ so  _ similar to their prowess in archery. 

Despite how often they wielded a blade or some form of blunt weaponry, they’d started to pride themself more and more in their mastery of the bow. This was , of course, on account of the fact that they’d managed to unlock their heightened perception in regards to archery FAR sooner than they had in regards to melee combat, and with little to no external prompting at that. If anything, the inducement all came from within, from...

What was it the Archer had said back then? Back on the Great Plateau, when he’d only endeavored to speak to them on two separate occasions? It was the second time, wasn’t it? It was then that they unlocked the skill of a similar nature, that allowed them to fall through the air as if gravity were nearly nullified, taking aim at targets almost unmoving at liberty, until they either tired themself out or touched the ground. 

He’d mentioned...someone else? Something about what someone else had taught them, to be sure, but what was it again? 

_ “Now just apply the lesson Elle gave you to your archery.” he supplied. _

Ahnu was almost startled by the statement, despite how used to the presence of the speaker they’d become. They couldn’t quite tell if they were just vividly recalling what he’d said, or if they'd... _ somehow _ prompted the voice to repeat itself. 

They weren’t sure if they wanted to know the answer to that question. They weren’t sure if they wanted to possess the ability to due such a thing. 

But still, they now had the words the Archer spoke, parroted to them in the same manner as they’d first heard it, and all they could think of now was  _ that  _ name. 

_ Elle...  _

Was the name of the assailant...Elle?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the Assailant has a name! If you want to see what Elle looks like, I've posted a drawing of her on my tumblr! Of course, Ahnu still doesnt know who this person is or what she's about--or like, why she's in their head--but we'll find that out soon! Thanks for reading!


	12. Chapter 12--  Kakariko (Still)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The longer Ahnu stays in Kakariko, the stranger things get. Thankfully, of all the things that happen to and around them in the Village, none are too distressing to scare them off. Yet.

On the way back down to Kakariko, Ahnu met a merchant named Bugut, to whom they sold a few of the items they’d swapped for the things they bought in the village earlier, remembering to do so before they ventured back, and hiding away their Slate on their person again. They also had the sense to swap out their Shrine given Sheikah armaments for the soldier’s shield, metal lizal bow, and Gerudo saber they’d been carrying about Kakariko in the two days they’d been around. 

They met the man at the crossroads, as he’d evidently just arrived from the South-Eastern road of the village, coming from a Stable that rested on the side of the Dueling Peaks Ahnu had avoided so emphatically. So silly, that seemed to them in hindsight now. 

Perhaps that would be the path Ahnu took when they eventually left the Village, which would be sometime tomorrow, if all goes well with their clothing order. 

They tried not to linger on how dejected the thought made them feel, as they strode into town alongside the merchant. 

Whereas Bugut made his way over to the inn for the night, Ahnu headed over to the dining area, wanting to put off sleep for a bit longer, but mostly just terribly hungry from the events of the day that distracted them from eating. Their diet had been somewhat restricted when they first came to the Village the morning before, what with them not being able to whip out their Slate to constantly snack away at their large selection of fresh supplies and ingredients, forcing them to only rely on the foodstuffs they could purchase or forage from within the confines of Kakariko. It was by no means a difficult endeavor, as the produce to be acquired in the quiet village was beyond delectable, even uncooked as Ahnu had eaten most of it, but they still decided to make up for lost time and variety by cooking something a little more complex than the open fire-roasted mushrooms, vegetables, and meats they were used to. 

Picking out the supplies in their leather pack that they’d set aside back above the village, specifically for this task, they set about cleaning and chopping the prime cut of deer meat, swift carrot, and common mushrooms, before mixing them about into a bowl of ground rock salt and herbs, then tossing it all into hot vegetable oil of the communal cooking wok. 

A simple dish, all in all, but as the contents of the pot sizzled and caramelized in a mix of the oil and fat from the meat, it smelled like the most wonderful thing in the world to a hungry Ahnu. Shoveling the cooked food into their (washed) bowl as soon as it was finished frying to their liking, they had to resist burning their mouth on the very large portion of food they endeavored to successfully—if also, dare they say, wonderfully—prepare. 

They were so focused on their meal, it being the only thing they wanted to think about on their trek back into the village, that they never once bothered to question how suspiciously empty the village was that night. No one milling about with a late-set routine, or none of the more nocturnal Sheikah going around, business as usual. Not even the guards were present at their nearby post, protecting the archway to the townhouse Ahnu never felt the urge to visit. 

It was just as Ahnu was about to eat, alone at night, occupying one of the many long dining tables of Kakariko’s designated feasting area, where they interrupted.

“ **YOU THERE** !”

The booming voice that came from behind and off to the side of them made Ahnu jump out of their seat, sending their chair tumbling away from them and making their knees hitting the underside of the table so hard that the large, thick wooden piece of outdoor furniture jolted in kind. They swung around, hands flailing in confusion, not quite sure if they were given a suitable cause to make a grab for the sword and shield on their back—considering they the potential threat in question was a person, not a monster. 

There at the base of the steps that lead up to the dark oak foundation of the dining areas, was Dorian. 

A very, VERY angry looking Dorian. 

“You’ve spent long enough in the village.” he seethed at them, voice dripping with venom, and eyes narrowed but irate looking. His face was pinched into a wrinkly, ugly snarl, aimed directly at Ahnu. “You can move along now, or  **else** .”

His demeanor, his menacing countenance, his words—all of it immediately made to disturb and upset Ahnu  _ incredibly _ . They had no idea what behavior on their part could have served to bring about such a reaction from the resident guard, and he didn’t seem all too keen to politely discuss it. 

Their mind began to race through everything they’d witnessed and learned in Kakariko, desperate to pinpoint what it was that might have set him off, coming up short of a suitable reason. It couldn’t have been that they’d stayed too long, as he had implied, seeing how Pikango had been staying at the village for a solid month beforehand without being chased off—so then what was it really?

Had...had he seen them leave the Shrine? Or had they simply slipped up in their hiding of the Slate?

They brought a hand over to their jacked, lightly feeling it beneath the coat to confirm it was still there—a mistake on their part.

“ **DON’T** .” Dorian spat at them. “Don’t even think about it.” 

Clearly, he’d taken their reaching to the front of their coat as a sign that they reached for a hidden weapon of some sort. He climbed the steps slowly, deliberately, not taking his eyes off of Ahnu the whole way up. He held no weapons, which was a minor relief to Ahnu, but he was clutching what looked to be a strip of paper in his right hand. 

“ _ You know— _ “ he hissed, low and furious, “ _ —I don't care for these sick games of yours. _ ”

He got to the top of the stairs, but didn’t bother closing the distance between Ahnu and himself. Regardless, his presence still seemed to tower over Ahnu, even from a dozen or so meters away—likely by virtue of the intense, malevolent aura he gave off. It all only served to drive Ahnu further into their distress, hands now clutching the front of their clothed chest tightly in panic.

“You’ve had your fun, run amok the village **—so leave** .“ He brought up the hand that held the strip of blue paper, putting the lot of its bright red inscriptions on display for Ahnu. “—Before I reveal who you are to the rest of Kakariko.”

Ahnu hadn’t exactly been scared of the man, as no amount of posturing or idle threats would serve to do little more than vex them terribly. They felt, in some distant and deep part of their mind, that they could handle the situation should the Sheikah man have chosen to aggress to anything physical. In fact, they almost wished that he’d chosen to go down the route of escalation, as they would have found it far less frightening than the ultimatum he’d offered them. 

Did he really know who they were?

It was that question that occupied their mind as Dorian finally began to gain ground towards Ahnu, just as slowly and intently menacing as before. It was their panic that left them frozen like a deer as he did so—that is, until he said something rather confusing. 

“Don’t think I won’t.” he threatened, not falling for the disturbed face Ahnu presented him. “I doubt your superiors are happy with you. With how often you muck about the village causing trouble. Don’t think for a second that they’ll miss you.”

...Superiors? Just what was he going on about?

At that, bewilderment seized Ahnu’s mind, granting them a reprieve from and clarity through the panic that had begun to lose it’s hold on them. It made them consider the venue that maybe, just MAYBE, the Sheikah guardsman MIGHT have them confused for someone else.

“They’ll dispose of you, just like they would anyone else they see as an inconvenience.” The man raved, further confusing Ahnu as to what the hells he was speaking about. “It amazes me how even after all this time, you still don’t see that they don’t care about you,  **_Denma_ ** .”

Okay. So, that’s not their name.

The way he spat it out seemed to suggest that he was certain that it was, which was enough to convince Ahnu that they were not the more decisively unaware party, for the first time in their new life. This newfound information dissolved most of the anxiety related to their breach of identity, leaving them with only concern, and the general distress of being yelled at. 

Unclenching their fists from their jacket, they began to move their hands about in a non-sudden, acquiescent manner, before attempting to sign—intent on smoothing the whole situation over—

“ **DON’T** .” Dorian shouted at them, making Ahnu flinch at the sheer volume and effectively cutting them off. They resisted the urge to cover their ears as he continued, “ **_Cut it out with that Hand-speak horseshit!_ ** ” he hollered at them, “ **SPEAK** ! You’ve made it clear that you can!”

Immediately, on his command, Ahnu opened their mouth—but nothing came out, other than a low whine. 

They tried, they  _ tried _ ,  _ they really really tried _ —but they couldn’t bring themself to do anything other than stare at Dorian, slack jawed and wide-eyed.

That seemed to frustrate him even more.

Because with a mangled snarl-turned-shout—Ahnu thinks it may have been a curse of some sort, but they couldn’t be for sure—Dorian lunged at them. 

Ahnu blinked, processing the attack on his part, before their almost instinctively ingrained reflexes kicked in. 

They ducked under the arm extended to them—not quite in the form of a blow, as there was no fist on the end of it, just that dark blue paper—deliberately stalling their footing behind them to trip the man, before opting to swing around and tackle him as he fell—a much gentler option than elbowing him between the shoulder blades.

They grabbed for the burly man’s arms before either of them hit the floor, stopping him from catching himself and potentially getting back to his feet. Unfortunately, this meant that he hit the wood of the communal dining porch HARD. Ahnu winced at the thud in sympathy, even as they restrained his arms behind him. 

“ **URG—GRAHH!!** ” he noised loudly in pain, before he began to thrash haphazardly, only vaguely aware that he was denied the use of arms held tightly behind him. “ **LET—LET ME GO!** ” He shouted, beginning to struggle in earnest. 

“ **STOP** !”

The voice cut through the cool night air like a knife, stilling Dorian—and also Ahnu, who was certainly not it’s source. They jumped off of the guardsman’s back, swinging their head around frantically to source the voice, finding that it belonged to stocky, wide-eyed and out of breath woman who stood down by the cooking area, a leather satchel clutched tightly to her chest—

—Claree.

“What are you doing?!” She yelled, a terrible worry written all over her face.

Ahnu couldn’t believe their terrible luck—for her to come  _ now  _ of all times—and to bear witness to _ this _ . They’d begun to clutch at their chest again miserably, looking down to the ground as if they were guilty of something worse than just defending themself. 

They tensed as they heard her march up the stairs, stomping all the way—only for her to tread right on past them. 

Ahnu swung their head around after her, only to witness Claree stand, hands on her hips, over a still-disoriented Dorian who had only just managed to roll over to his rear. 

“Dorian!” She yelled at the man, much to his confusion, if the bewildered expression he bore at their accusing tone was anything to go by. “What the hells are you doing?!”

Ahnu heard shuffling behind them, and upon turning it revealed to be the presence of the elderly couple in charge of the general store that the dining area was nestled besides. Steen held a protective arm out in front of his wife, though both seemed to look upon Ahnu with something maybe resembling sympathy. The commotion must have woken them up. Ahnu had no idea how long the two had been observing, either from where they were now, and shuffling closer, or from the shadows. 

The Sheikah truly were a quiet people.  _ ‘Shadow Folk, indeed.’ _ Ahnu thought, before turning back to face the maelstrom going on behind them. 

“I can’t believe you! This, again?!” Claree argued at the older man. “They aren’t Yiga, Dorian! I checked!”

Yiga? Is  _ that  _ what this is about? Dorian thought that they were a malevolent spy, of some sort? When they really thought about it, it was a better explanation than any Ahnu could offer. They recalled what the pumpkin farmer had told them about the Clan, but beyond what he’d said—about them being Sheikah who swore fealty to the Calamity—they couldn’t extrapolate much more than the fact that the Yiga Clan was bad. They supposed it was a fair reason to be suspicious of some random person that wandered into town speaking Sheikah, even though Ahnu didn’t look anything like them. 

“Wha—what?!” Dorian sputtered. “When?!”

Indeed, when—and  _ how _ —Ahnu wondered, looking over at Claree expectantly. 

“It was...” She returned Ahnu’s faze reluctantly, barring a guilty look. “Back at the shop. They came in to buy clothing, I took their measurements, and I checked them like I do everyone else. I...” She turned back to Dorian, but covered her face up in what Ahnu could only guess to be some mix between embarrassment and shame, before mumbling muffled words thought her fingers. “I knew I was forgetting something. I should have told you before I went to sleep. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry.”

Ahnu wasn’t exactly sure if that last part was directed at Dorian, or them. 

“But—” replied a still incredulous Dorian, frantically swapping from looking between Claree and Ahnu. “But they speak Sheikah!” he posed as defense for his accusation. 

“And gerudo.” came the resolute voice of the elderly shopkeep, Trissa, from behind.

Dorian looked over at her, baffled, before adding on “And their name—” he exclaimed, “—they claim their name is Ahnu! That’s—“

“A Gerudo name.” supplied the carrot farmer, Steen, from besides his wife. 

...It  _ was?  _

“—Or at least, an old Gerudo word. I remember learning that from my travels, in my younger years. Lot’s of Gerudo foster and step-parent Hylian kids, y’know.” Steen stated. 

“You know that the great Engineer himself married a Hylian that learned Sheikah long before she’d met him.” Trissa said, adding to Ahnu’s defense. “Is it so hard to believe that they’re just a worldly traveler?”

Ahnu didn’t know who this “Engineer” was, or really understood anything before that—on top of the general conversation as a whole—and frankly, they were starting to get whiplash from the fraught series of events. 

The only person present that was as confused as Ahnu was appeared to be Dorian, who eventually turned to look right at them. They met his befuddled, slack-jawed stare with a simple, concerned glance, which appeared to make him wince as if he’d been stabbed. 

“I—I” he floundered, getting to his feet as he continued to look at Ahnu with a grimace. “I didn’t—I’m—“

When he took a step forward, Ahnu took a step back, effectively stopping the man in his tracks, guilt finally starting to seep into his expression. 

“O-oh...” He looked down to the planks beneath his feet, fists clenched at his sides. “I’m so...” he trailed off, seemingly having run out of enough steam to even conclude what Ahnu could only guess was an apology. 

For a moment, everyone stood about in silence, no one sure about what to say—if there even was anything  _ to  _ say. 

Then, Steen broke the quiet with a loud clearing of his throat, putting all eyes, save Dorian’s, on him. He climbed up the stairs, heading past Ahnu to tug on one of Dorian’s sleeves. 

“C’mon, ya big lug.” he said. “I’ll take you home.”

Steen lightly gripped an unresponsive Dorian’s wrist, guiding the guard past Ahnu and down from the dining area—shooting Ahnu an apologetic glance as he departed.

After the two disappeared into the night, the remainders of the post-scuffle debrief having watched them head off, Trissa looked towards Ahnu with the same expression on her face, albeit a bit more ridden with concern.

“We’re awfully sorry about this mess.” she apologized on the behalf of all the Sheikah involved, before asking, “Are you alright, dearie?” 

Ahnu simply nodded. 

“Well, that’s a relief.” Trissa murmured. “I hope you’ll forgive poor Dorian...” she added, before pausing to look off in the direction her husband and the man in question departed. Her face contorted in her contemplation, and by the time she turned to Ahnu again, it was of a decisively sad complexion. 

“You see... the thing is...” Trissa began, as if she were about to explain something. 

“—I'll take care of it, Tris.” Claree interrupted from behind Ahnu, spooking them a little on account of them having forgotten she was still present. “You head back to bed, alright?” she said, giving the old woman a reassuring glance. 

Trissa looked at Claree now, considering the offer, before finally nodding. 

“Alright then. Goodnight, you two.” She bid them farewell with a small bow, which both Ahnu and Claree reciprocated. 

Once the two of them were alone, Ahnu turned to look at Claree questioningly, seeing how she offered herself up to be the one to fill in the gaps for them. Claree, to her credit, didn’t waste their time with any sort of floundering.

“Okay. Look—” she stated, brow still a bit furrowed. “—Here’s the thing.”

* * *

“—and they can assume the form of literally anyone.” Claree Informed them, taking a quick bite of her stir-fry, chewing and swallowing before adding, “They tend to mimic random travelers they observe in the world—typically people they’ve robbed, or worse.”

Ahnu didn’t have to ask what “worse” was at this point, Claree having gone over in great detail the WIDE range of criminal activity that the Yiga Clan got up to. Petty thievery was relatively low on the list of abhorrence. 

They continued to examine the strip of paper she’d given them, identical to the one Dorian wielded against them earlier in the night—a “minor paper spell talisman of truth.” Apparently, these sorts of spells had a variety of uses, the most relevant of which being that they cut right through the disguise spells utilized by the Yiga, which is why half of the residents of Kakariko happened to always have a couple on hand. It was a navy shade of parchment that was embellished by bright red, enchanted ink, with the most dominating bit of the design being the icon of the Sheikah, which seemed to stare Ahnu down from every corner of the village— _ “The Eye of Truth.” _

Ahnu looked back up to Claree, who continued to eat her spice-fried vegetables. The whole reason she’d even been outside at such an hour was to get some fresh air and cook herself a large meal after having slept a solid dozen or so hours. Her hair was still damp from the bath she’d taken prior, having come out of the bathhouse ready to prepare herself a meal, only to have spotted—or rather, heard—Dorian yelling at Ahnu from a distance. She’d booked it across the road to break up the fighting, after which the situation quickly de-escalated thanks to the intervention of so many people. 

The tailor had already apologized profusely by the time the two of them sat down together at the dining table, Ahnu having to assure her far too many times that they forgave her for verifying their identity without their consent before she felt at ease enough to simultaneously cook and talk at length about the vile clan. After some of the things Claree told them about the Yiga, Ahnu couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t vet EVERY person that visited the reclusive village. 

“Dorian might hate them more than anyone else in the village.” she continued after a time, vision still trained on her bowl of food. “They killed his wife about a year ago.”

Ahnu nearly tore the damned paper spell in half. 

They immediately looked up to Claree in a panic, with an apologetic expression as they held the rumpled up talisman out to her, earning a small laugh that really didn’t fit the context of the situation. 

“Don’t worry about that.” she dismissed with a shake of her head and a wave of her free hand. “Like I said, we’ve all got plenty of those spells here in town, and we’re more than capable of making more. You can keep that, if you’d like.” 

Ahnu took her up on that offer, tucking the spell away into their leather bag. Might be useful someday. 

“His wah, wife?” They tentatively asked, not wanting to seem rude for inquiring about a subject so clearly devastating, but beyond curious as to the reasoning behind Dorian’s particular distaste towards the Yiga. 

“Hm?” Claree noised, having dipped out of the conversation in contemplation for a moment. She looked sad, but in the soft sort of way that people regarded a tragedy long passed—it reminded Ahnu about how some of the older travelers they’d met thus far talked about the Calamity. “Oh, yes. Kirra was a wonderful woman. But a little over a year ago, the Yiga raided Kakariko...”

Claree had to stop speaking for a moment to wipe at the premature tears forming in her eyes. Ahnu didn’t need to hear anything more than that to figure out just what she meant to imply, and respectfully stayed quiet. She calmed herself rather quickly, regaining enough composure to resume speaking. 

“When Dorian showed up at the village, some 15 years ago or so, everyone shunned him for quite some time...” She recalled, fingers gently stroking a knot in the wood of the table. “I was just a little girl back then, and my mom was just as protective of me then as he is now, with his girls. I was never allowed near him, and was dragged away by whatever adult that caught me talking to him...”

That sounded familiar to Ahnu, who recalled Dorian doing precisely the same thing with his daughters in regards to them, though through means a little more covert. 

“We’re alway suspicious when one of the descendants of traveling Sheikah show up, and try to insert themself into the community.” she supplied, looking over to the inn. “Like that painter. We never know if they’re just another spy sent by the Yiga to infiltrate the village.”

“So Dorian shows up one a day, just an adult Sheikah, all alone, absolutely covered head to toe in cuts and bruises. Of course the medics of the village treat him, because suspicious as he was, no one in Kakariko is  _ that  _ heartless.” Claree specified, idly stirring her cooling food with her chopsticks as she spoke, a melancholic smile gracing her lips as she stared off into the distant and dark of the village, only broken by the gentle yellow illumination of the intermittent street lantern. “For weeks, no one talked to him. No one except Kirra.”

Claree closed her eyes fondly at some memory she wasn’t so inclined to share with Ahnu, before finally adding, “After a great deal of time, the village began to accept Dorian. He and Kirra got married, and had Koko and Cottla.” She looked at the Hylian, that desolate sort of smile still painted on her lips. “The two of them were very much in love, and the whole village was absolutely devastated at her loss.”

The two were silent for some time, what with Ahnu not knowing what to say, and Claree having nothing left to divulge. 

“I’m...so sorry...” Ahnu said with feeling, sometime later, while tugging on the cloth band of their bangle and pointedly  _ not  _ looking at the tailor. “You were...her friend?” they asked. 

“Oh, yes.” she laughed her odd, hollow laugh again—more so to fill the empty air than having anything to do with some vague humor. “Everyone was. But she was...also just a little bit more to me...”

“More what?” Ahnu dumbly asked, not quite aware enough to know when to lay off. 

“Well...” Claree looked off to the side again, over to the distant Goddess statue across the road, small and illuminated in torch-light. “She was my sister.”

* * *

In the late morning at the inn, Ahnu woke up to the sliding of the door, as they usually did. It didn’t usually bother them all too much, as while Stables didn’t exactly have doors for passing travelers to have open and close, they were generally much louder and busier at night, even during the designated “period of silence” that falls around 9:00PM. I’m comparison, the indoor inn was a luxury of comfort and silence that might just have soured the boarding experience of Stables for them, just a little. 

They quietly shrugged the sheets and comforters that came with the rented bed off of themself, crawling over to the gap in the privacy curtain that hung down from the ceiling, peeking over to the front desk to see who it was approaching the front desk. When they saw that it was in fact the very man that started a scuffle with them last night, Ahnu swiftly retreated their head back into the seclusion that was their allotted space, until they chose to leave it for the day. Thankfully, Dorian didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he didn’t say anything—though that may have been due to just how concerned he was with matters he began to discuss with the sleepy clerk. 

Ahnu focused their hearing, curious about what could have brought Dorian to the inn. When they did so, they became aware of the soft pitter-patter that signaled rain hitting the building, likely at some angle considering the thatched roofing. The village was always cloudy around the time of morning and night, at least for the short time Ahnu was present to observe the weather, so the showers didn’t come at such a surprise to them. 

“—and I found Cottla drying off in the living room, but not Koko” Dorian whispered, likely for the benefit of the sleeping residents of the inn, which amounted to Ahnu and a still-snoring Pikango. “I know she usually comes here when it starts to rain and she’s closer to the inn than she is home.”

_ That  _ sounded concerning. 

“Sorry, Dorian.” Ollie apologized, sincerely awake now, as he seemed to have a habit of dozing off in between the visits of potential customers. “I haven’t seen her all morning, but I’ll keep an eye out, alright?”

Ahnu heard a deep sigh, then a dejected “Thank you.” in return, before the sound of the door sliding—purposefully gentle given how little noise it gave off compared to when someone opened and closed it without consideration—signaled the concerned father’s departure. 

So Koko was missing? Though, missing may have been too strong a word. It wasn’t a small village, and based off of how many people Ahnu observed absolutely adore the youngest residents of the village, it could have been just as likely that she’d taken shelter with any one of them. Dorian was likely investigating that avenue this moment, running door to door in the rain, frantically looking for his eldest child. 

Ahnu laid still in the bed for a moment, thinking. They were already stuck in the village until tomorrow morning. Claree assured them that she would have their clothing ready by then, seeing how she had to deal with some “emergency” up at the townhouse. Something about having to repair some important article of clothing for the village elder—so they had a full day of waiting ahead of them. 

It was with little internal debate that Ahnu decided to get dressed and equip their usual gear, leaving only their leather backpack, and bidding the inn-keep farewell with a silent bow before setting off into the rain. 

* * *

Of the four paths that branched out of Kakariko, Ahnu had yet to hear where only one of them led, what with Pikango and Bugut confirming that the only commonly traveled road lead out to the area behind the Dueling Peaks, and the other village guard, Cado, informing them that the South-most route lead into an open fielded decline known as the Saharsa Slope. 

“Hm. I don’t see her going anywhere that might lead her out of the village.” the guardsman said, his demeanor devoid of any of the usual suspicion he’d held towards them from a distance, suggesting that Dorian might have divulged the prior night’s events to his fellow villager. “Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do here—and believe me, if at least one of us didn’t have to be on guard at this hour, I’d be doing the same—but I suggest you let Dorian find his little girl. He’s working his way up to the Northern homes as we speak, so he’ll find her. Don’t worry about it, alright?” 

Ahnu, perhaps wisely, but also somewhat rudely, didn’t listen to him, instead heading up towards the only unexplored path in the whole Village that no one seemed to talk about. Heading North, it was a fast paced, 20 minute trek for the Hylian through the thin mountain pass, after which they found themself in a slightly more open area carved into the rock. 

The small section of land ended abruptly in a ridge that overlooked the Lanayru Wetlands Ahnu had been roaming all about earlier in the month—though it was difficult to make out through the mist and showers—making Ahnu realize just how close they’d been to Kakariko the whole time. There was some wooden fencing that bordered it, likely for safety reasons, and in-between Ahnu and the railing, there was an abundance of lush grasses dotted with small flowers all about, a menagerie of mossy and erected stones to the left, and a large oak to the right—under which, sat a curled up Koko.

Excited to have found her, Ahnu bounded over to the little girl, the sound of their splashing about in the water and mud on their approach evidently jolting the girl out of her stillness beneath the tree.

“Waaaaah!” she yelled, her head shooting up at the sight of Ahnu’s strangely masked face coming towards her. They quickly shoved it to the side of their head, having completely forgotten that they were even wearing it. “You scared Koko!” she then added, slightly irritated. 

Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying. 

“I’m sorry.” Ahnu quickly replied, gesturing the sign of the same meaning as they did so. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” they then frantically added, not sure how to handle the situation. “You’re crying.”

“Nuh-No!” the little girl replied with a sniffle, abashedly pointing to her wet cheeks. “This is just rain!”

Indeed, Koko was drenched head to toe, likely caught off guard by the rain. Still, Ahnu looked at her skeptically, though still more concerned for her than they were critical of the obvious lie. She seemed to flounder and deflate under their gaze. 

“Koko isn’t...” She sniffled again, “Koko isn’t crying!” she whined, all bite having left her indignence. “Koko needs to be strong for Mother...” She curled back up, hiding her face behind her knees that she hugged close to her body. 

...Oh.  _ Oh _ . Oh no. 

Ahnu recalled the talk Claree had given them last night, the latter of which revolved around the tragedy that was the murder of the woman named Kirra, who was Dorian’s wife—and Koko’s mother. 

They recalled the other morning, when they'd accidentally stumbled upon Kakriko, Cottla finding them, instead of the “mommy“ she was looking for—the mommy who was dead. It shined a far grimmer light on the reality that was the life of this poor family, torn apart by tragedy. A father whose grieving further drives his temper, a child who has yet to understand what death was or where her mom went, and another who sat somewhere in between—knowing the truth but not quite equipped to deal with the loss. 

There was nothing for them to say, so Ahnu instead chose to sit down besides the little girl. After a while, her quiet sobbing trailed off into soft hiccups, and she lifted her head to look over at the large group of small rock pillars, each covered in countless groves and lines that covered the entirety of their surface like striations of a sort—gravestones, Ahnu realizes. the kind where one name is added just after the other, seperated only by the “space” character of the Sheikah language, until there is no more surface area to engrave on a stone, and so another is added to the lot. 

“Mother is...” Koko began, her youthful voice a wavering whisper, almost entirely dulled out by the rain. “Sleeping here. She’s probably making friends in heaven...”

Ahnu could find nothing around to signify the area as a burial site, not to mention that it seemed far too small to have been housing the remains of Sheikah for an unknown amount of generations. So, cremation then, with the ashes being spread about the memorial stones. 

“Father thinks it’s best not to tell us she’s gone.” she said, tucking her head back behind her knees, somewhat paradoxically when she added, quieter still, “But Koko knows. That’s why Koko must be strong...”

But it was hard, Ahnu could tell, to be so strong when you were alone, not completely understanding the full scope of something so much bigger and worse than what you can gauge. 

“I think you’re very strong.” Ahnu stated with sincerity. “You take care of your sister, you cook for anyone who’s hungry, and you showed me around town when no one else would—because they were scared of me. I think that you’re very strong, kind, and brave.”

At that, Koko looked up at Ahnu, fresh tears dispersing about the rainwater that coated her wet face. 

“Ruh-really?” she asked with a cautiously unbelieving expression, as if she didn’t want to turn down a compliment that she couldn’t fully believe was directed at her. “But...I’m crying...” she posed, to detract from the praise. Ahnu didn’t miss how her self reference shifted to the first-person.

“I don’t think crying makes you weak.” Ahnu supplied. “Even strong adults cry, right?” They could only assume that  _ some  _ of the other villagers were moved to tears at the passing of the little girl’s mother. That possibly, some of them looked at the little girls now and then after the tragedy, and couldn’t help but see how Kirra’s daughters were running about without her, shedding a few tears in response to old memories that had been forever tainted bittersweet. 

Koko seemed to consider this, before nodding along as if Ahnu had just given her a bit of sagely advice. 

“Yes, father cries too, at night sometimes, when he thinks Koko’s asleep. So does auntie, when she’s stressed.” the little Sheikah replied. 

The two stared off into the rain for a while in silence, watching the grass dance erratically as droplets pounded down against the greenery. When the downpour began to slow, and sunlight was streaming in from gaps between the clouds, Ahnu suggested that the two of them head back into the Village. 

“Oh, okay...” Koko agreed, but clearly reluctantly, looking off to the side some in residual sadness.

“What’s wrong?” Ahnu asked. They figured that it would be rather fair for her to still be upset, as it wasn’t exactly right to expect a child to compartmentalize their emotions as well as an adult. The pain of losing her mother never would go away, just diminish to the point that the kinder memories would more often win over the darker ones. 

“It’s just...” she sighed. “Koko wishes she had some of mother’s favorite flowers to leave here for her. Koko's been stuck under this tree since the early morning, and didn’t get to gather any because of the rain...”

“Well...” Ahnu trailed off, an objectively unwise idea forming in their head. Their gloved hand ghosted over the breast of their jacket, where the Slate was hidden. “What’s her favorite flower?” they asked, now fully committed to their foolery. 

“The flower of the Sheikah,” Koko replied, “—blue nightshade.”

“Okay, hold on.” 

Ahnu went around the tree quickly, to the other side where a curiously spectating Koko couldn’t see, and re-emerged from behind it carrying a couple of the bell flowers, full stalk and roots still intact—considering how they preferred to harvest ground flora by digging them up instead of plucking them. 

“Found some.” Ahnu curtly stated, holding the flowers over to the child who was just getting to her feet. Technically, not a lie, since they did at some point find the flowers. 

“Wh-whoa!” Koko exclaimed, wide-eyed in amazement. “Behind the tree?”

“Hm.” Ahnu hummed neutrally, still not going to lie—instead letting Koko draw her own conclusions. “We could bury them in front of the offering stones?” they offered, attempting to detract focus from just how they acquired the nightshade. 

“Oh! Yeah!” Koko agreed with a smile, though it quickly fell as she looked over to the memorial stones. “But, we’ll get all dirty and muddy...”

“I think we already are.” they replied, gesturing to their own boots and pants, which were caked in mud from running around and sitting on wet ground. 

“Wah—!” Koko looked down at her own feet, then twisted around to see her own skirt and leggings also covered in mud. “Oh! Well then we already have to wash out clothes, and take a bath, huh?” she asked, looking up to Ahnu for confirmation. 

They’d been meaning to launder their garb and visit the bathhouse for some time now, so that sounded like a solid idea to them. 

Ahnu nodded in response, smiling to Koko, who returned the expression in full. 

The two of them buried the flowers in the offering ring of the stones—where others came to leave food or pray—after which Ahnu flipped their baldric to carry their weapons on their front and free up their back, giving Koko a fast paced piggy-back ride into the village, the little girl laughing all the way. 

* * *

“—Owooooo!” Cottla bleated in a manner that she must have thought to be scary, holding her hands up as she pestered her big sister, who was too busy cooking to pay direct attention to her. “Look at me! I’m a monster! OWOOooo!“

“That’s the sound of a wolf, Cottla.” Koko chided, not even looking at her sister. “And I can’t look, I have to watch the pumpkin bake!”

She was kneeling by the opening of the communal oven, watching the carved open fortified squash she’d seasoned with oil, salt, and pepper roast away, ready to tell Ahnu when to pull it out with a wooden spatula so she could dump in the stew she prepared earlier and let it all simmer for a while longer. It was a bit too heavy to handle on her own, which is why she enlisted the help of the Hylian that she wanted to share the meal with. 

To keep Cottla busy for the time being, Ahnu had given the little girl their heart-shaped mask to run around with, under the promise that she’d give it back later. According to her, she’d already spooked “granny“ Mellie, which she seemed rather proud of.

After the Ahnu and Koko had returned to the central portion of the village, they were greeted by an incredibly relieved and thankful Dorian. He hadn’t mentioned the events of the night prior, and Ahnu didn’t really expect him to—at least not in front of his daughter. However, he did insist on laundering Ahnu’s clothes for them alongside his own daughter’s garb while the two of them visited the bathhouse, which Ahnu agreed to. That seemed to perk him up some, perhaps revealing that his favor to them was more of a way to say sorry for the night before. 

They, of course, excused themself to run off and store their weapons and mask at the porch of the inn, hiding the Slate in one of the many empty pots that lined the side of the building, before heading back over to the man to hand off their clothing. 

Ahnu found it pretty funny how he gawked at them when they stripped down to only their underclothes and bracelet outside of the bathhouse where they were all meandering about, averting his eyes by the time they handed him their soaked clothing. Evidently, he didn’t have the same strong stomach for partial nudity that Claree did. They giggled when Koko followed in suit, despite her father's embarrassed urging against it, and the two of them headed into the “family” section of the bathhouse, laughing about it together. 

Koko shared her soaps with Ahnu, which they really liked the floral aroma of on account of the fact that all of them smelled like blue nightshade. When the little girl had mentioned that it was the defining flower of Kakariko, she wasn’t kidding. That, or she just really loved this specific scent of soap, which is a preference that Ahnu could agree with. 

They cleaned their underclothes before they went to bathe, both their undershorts and undercrop being left to dry on one of the provided interior racks, ordinarily used for holding the towels people would wrap themselves in before heading to get changed into clean clothes in an adjoined room that separated the baths from the lobby. 

Ahnu had only been wearing the undercrop for a solid day and a half now, but they liked it enough that they were probably going to wear it with the same regularity of their undershorts. They especially liked how it’s general color-scheme and design matched that of the meager garment they’d woken up in, even feeling to be made of the same durable material. This  _ did  _ suggest that their undershorts were of Sheikah make, but that didn’t concern Ahnu as much as the realization that Claree had given them some garb that was typically only delegated to villagers. Though, they supposed that it was fine since Dorian didn’t seem to mind that fact as much as he did them shrugging off the lot of their clothing. 

Their underclothes weren’t even remotely dry by the time they’d finished attending to their own hygiene, but that fact hardly bothered them. They donned what little coverage they had, and strolled back into town with Koko. Had Ahnu managed to tell a version of themself that was not even a month younger that they felt comfortable enough to walk around in a village with no armor, no weapons, and no  _ Slate _ —the past version of them would think Ahnu went crazy. 

To say that they weren’t nervous feeling so bare would have been a lie—just not as big a lie as it might have been sometime before. Their discomfort stemmed more from a sense of vulnerability than that of modesty though, so they were hardly embarrassed to be seen. Granted, they didn’t exactly like being looked at, and preferred to obscure their head and face from people at the very least, but it seemed that any adult Sheikah that passed the communal dining area where they were helping cook a meal were too shy themselves to even face their direction, which was more than acceptable to Ahnu. 

That’s not to say they remained completely uncovered, seeing how Dorian had sent Cottla to deliver towels to them and Koko in the bath, which Ahnu now wore as a shawl. She also told them that her father had hung Ahnu’s clothing on the clothesline behind the inn, so they’d know where to pick up their garb later, when it was dry. 

Their hair, now legitimately clean and smelling of soap instead of river water, was starting to fluff up and curl more than usual as it dried, taking on an even wavier look than before. It was much softer to the touch than usual, which Ahnu like so much, they ran off to the inn to retrieve their leather bag, sell off all the less-than-perishables they’d stuffed inside for that expressed purpose, and buy the general store out of it’s entire stock of different spelling soaps and detergent—stuffing their bag with those instead. Now that they knew the glorious feeling of using suds, they were unlikely to ever go without them and regular bathing ever again. 

Ahnu and the girls sat down to a VERY good, early dinner, courtesy of Koko’s cooking skills, which Dorian eventually joined in on once he’d gotten back from a quick round of village patrolling. He ate in relative silence while the girls rattled off questions to Ahnu about what it was like to be an adventurer, which they did their best to answer. Occasionally, he smiled at some of his girls' inane inquiries, like Cottla asking “What does a Bokoblin smell like?” or Koko with the especially odd “Can you actually cook monster parts?”

Ahnu’s answers were “Bad,” and “Unfortunately.” respectively, both or which earned a hearty laugh from the large man—which in turn, relieved Ahnu immensely. 

It was only when one of the girls asked a question that was relatively sensible, did Ahnu come up short on an answer. 

“Why do you know Sheikah?” Koko asked.

Now  _ that _ gave Ahnu pause. What could they even say? That they just woke up one day, speaking it, and two other languages? Four in total, if you count Hand-Speak as its own form of language instead of just an extension of Hylian, like speech and writing. 

Now that they thought about it, that was kind of strange, wasn’t it? To be fair, there wasn’t exactly anything about Ahnu that  _ wasn’t _ odd, but still—to know how to communicate at all, when all form of memory was wiped from their mind?

“Yeah!” Cottla added onto her sister's question. “You aren’t a Sheikah!”

“We don’t know that!” Koko responded to her younger sibling, turning to face her instead of Ahnu. 

“But they have dark hair!” Cottla posed in defense of her claim, more confused than resolute. 

“Now, now.” Dorian interjected. “We don’t know that. For all we know, they could be like Miss Rola, alright?” He peered up at Ahnu, eyes narrowed and brows raised not in suspicion, but in apology, as if he were trying to communicate  _ ‘please forgive my girls incessant and possibly rude questions.’ _

It was interesting, to say the very least, for him to come so quickly to their defense after what happened last night— _ because _ of what happened last night. 

“Yeah!” Koko chimed.

“Oooh. Right!” came Cottla in kind. “Cottla forgot!”

The children seemed satisfied with their father’s addition to the conversation, thankfully lacking the sense to validate the supposition with confirmation from Ahnu, and the four of them finished their meal without incident. 

After cleaning up the portion of the dining area that Ahnu and the family of three had occupied, Dorian sent his girls off to the house with the washed bowls and utensils, the dying light of the incoming sunset chasing after them. 

“Erm...hey.” he said awkwardly. 

After their departure, Dorian turned to speak to Ahnu, earning their attention from the place where they sat at the dining area, inspecting the lovely soaps they’d bought from Trissa and had laid out on the table all around them, like a jeweler examining a whole host of gems. They eyed him only somewhat curiously, mostly aware of the route this conversation was probably going to take. 

“I just wanted to tell you that...” Dorian trailed off, breaking the unsteady eye contact he’d been trying to make with Ahnu, which was apparently more intimidating an endeavor for him than them. 

“It’s okay.” Ahnu interjected, picking up where he left off, causing the guardsman’s head to whip back around to their direction, a baffled look on his face. 

“Wha—what?!” 

“It’s okay.” they repeated, before adding on in Hand-Speak, ‘I forgive you.’

“But—!” he responded, apparently against the notion of their forgiveness, still unbelieving of their sheer clemency. “It isn’t! I—I accused you of being a Yiga! I attacked you!”

Ahnu shrugged at him, earning a twitch of the eye. 

“Claree talked to me.” they supplied, the words morphing his bewildered expression into that of a wince. "Told me." 

“Ah...” he noised, looking aside yet again, eyes narrowed some. “...How much?” he asked, as gingerly as he could.

“Enough.” They replied simply, before adding, “—Enough to make me wonder why you all don’t just check every visitor with a talisman.”

At that, Dorian’s morose attitude dropped like a hat, effectively halted before he even had the chance to actually become sad, his head shooting back over in their direction.

“—I know, right?!” the guardsman exclaimed, wide eyed in emphatic agreement as he splayed his hands. He quickly remembered his place though, and backtracked on his outburst in embarrassment. “Ah-ah...but of course, Lady Impa says it’s rude...”

Ahnu stiffened.

Right.  _ Her _ . The person they were instructed to find. The elder, who’s still  _ alive  _ and  _ here _ .

Thankfully, their sudden discomfort flew under the radar of the large man, who was still attempting to regain some of his own composure. 

“And, of course, she’s right. We’ve all been particularly tense as of the late, especially since she and her granddaughter have gone and holed themselves up in the townhouse in mourning.” 

Mourning? For his wife—Still? That didn’t make a lot of sense, considering that the man most affected by her death was standing before them, relatively composed. So, for someone else then. This was the first time they were hearing about the passing of someone else. If it were particularly relevant to the Yiga, Ahnu felt like Claree might have mentioned it. Considering that she didn’t, they chalked it up to either an elder who’d been on death’s door for long enough that the village had collectively mourned them mostly while they were still alive, or possibly an outsider that was a dear friend of the old woman. 

“Suspicion on our part is one thing, but...” He resumed, peering over to Ahnu, sincerity shining in apologetic eyes, “—how I treated you was absolutely unacceptable. I’m sorry.” he finished with a deep bow. 

_ Now _ , Ahnu felt awkward. Things like genuine gratitude, and evidently also regret, being directed right at them just seemed to have that effect. 

‘I already forgave you.’ they signed when he was up straight again. 

“I know, but...” he replied, reluctant to be granted so much leniency. “Isn’t there anything else I can do to make it up to you?” he asked. 

Considering that he’d already washed their clothes for them, Ahnu was equally reluctant to ask of him any sort of further favor, not to mention just plain uncomfortable. That was, until they caught sight of something just over the man’s shoulder, off across the road. 

Stone and silver and sun-bleached cloth, illuminated by the light of four torches.

No one would tell Pikango what happened to it, but maybe...?

They refocused on Dorian’s eager face, lifting their hands back up to their chest. 

‘Do you know what happened to the Goddess Statue?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu's starting to develop a thicker skin, yes? Or maybe they just really like Kakariko. Who knows. Thanks for following along! with what's about to happen next, We'll be testing whether of not Ahnu can themself!


	13. Chapter 13--  Time to Leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunate experiences--memories--that plague the past a lifetime ago bubble to the surface for a moment, which turns out to be a moment too long. Ahnu responds the only way they've learned how to ever since their new-life began.

They looked up at her carved face, a hand caressing her cheek. 

They were at the Goddess statue again. 

They didn’t really know why, because they didn’t have enough spirit orbs to offer up to it in exchange for the enhancement of their being. Dorian had satisfied their curiosity in regards to it too, so there really was no reason for them to be there, on the first cloudless night they’d seen in the Lanayru region—

—Fingertips brushing up against the silver that filled the cracks of it’s neck. A lethal chain that separated the head from the body. 

_ “Oh, that?” Dorian asked in kind, earning a nod from Ahnu. “Some hooligan desecrated it nearly a century ago.” he replied with a disappointed shake of the head. “One of our village’s most devoted warriors spent countless hours collecting all of the pieces from the bottom of the pond, putting them all back together and mending the Goddess with the most precious metal of our village.” _

He offered up no definitive reason as to why someone would do such a thing—to make an obvious affront to the Goddess herself—just a bit of speculation as to the identity of the malefactor, and the possible nature of the statue’s malady. 

_ “I always assumed that it was some sort of malicious message from the Yiga, seeing how this was back before...” He shook his head again, yet another individual unwilling to elaborate where there need be no further explanation.  _

Was it just younger Hylians and Sheikah that proved reluctant to refer to the event directly?

_ “But the elders seem to think otherwise. The offense wasn’t exactly a prank, per say...” he trailed off, turning to look at the statue himself. “Some of them think that a passing swordsman used it as a training dummy—” he offered, a wince visible on the profile of his face. “—that would certainly line up with the damage done to the statue...” _

Ahnu inspected the Goddess statue even closer, confirming that it’s affliction was limited to the neck, with the occasional hairline crack traveling up to scar it’s face. It was as if it’s head was sliced from the rest of of it.

_ “Some swordsman...” Dorian mumbled, mostly in disgust, though there was a little bit of bafflement—perhaps even awe—mixed in. _

Ahnu had to admit, it WAS impressive, if that truly was the case. Whoever it was that saw fit to offend the Goddess herself certainly didn’t lack in the attempt—cutting through solid stone with enough force and speed to keep the majority of the carving roughly intact. 

_ “—But no one knows for sure. Even lady Impa—the only Sheikah in the village who was alive and old enough to accurately recall the event at the time—refuses to so much as acknowledge the crime.” the guardsman added. “I believe she would rather the actions of that ne’er-do-well fade into obscurity, rather than be glorified through the propagation of the event’s account.” _

The scrapes on the wings could certainly testify to the actions of that mystery, if not provide outright confirmation. It was evidence enough of the intent behind the beheading—the sheer amount of  _ disrespect _ . 

Ahnu lightly dragged their thumb up along the cracks that crept up the face of the Goddess, coated in silver rather than filled, indicative of the fact that the head remained relatively intact after the crime—only the neck having taken the brunt of the whatever blow that was delivered. 

Ahnu wondered about this “devoted warrior” that Dorian mentioned, who’d put the Goddess back together. They wished, in hindsight, that they’d asked him about it instead of what they had actually inquired next. 

_ “Duh—Denma?!” he responded with nearly bugged out eyes, trying to gauge if he’d heard them right. To see his demeanor shift from serious to comically astonished was quite the sight. “I, uh—did say that, didn’t I?” He rubbed at the back of his neck nervously. “It’s just—er—“ His head swiveled over to look behind himself, as if he were looking around for something worthy of excusing himself from the conversation. Evidently he’d found it.  _

_ “Oh! I think I’ve left my daughters alone for too long! They must be at home, waiting for me to tuck them in for the night!”  _

Soon enough, the guardsman had bid Ahnu a rather frantic farewell for the night, leaving them alone at the communal dining area. 

Now, as they stood marveling at the mending yet again, only without the pressure of the single guardsman’s eyes boring into their back, they had half a mind to lift the statues bib. 

Would that be rude? Not just to the lone Cado (who seemed to be dozing where he stood at the entrance to the townhouse stairway, a couple dozen meters away), but to the Goddess herself, who they  _ knew  _ utilized the stone carved in her vague image—though bearing more of a symbolic likeness that encompasses divinity and prayer with her wings and pressed hands—as a vessel. She hadn’t seemed to take offense to a lack of regard, back when Ahnu didn’t even know who she was... 

Whether or not she was forgiving or uncaring though, was still up for debate. 

They realize then, that they didn’t really know anything about her.  _ Hylia _ . And what they did know, they weren’t sure that they liked. 

They became vaguely aware of a pulsing starting up, right behind their eyes. Regardless, they continued to contemplate their relation to the divine. Perhaps, a mistake on their part. 

She spoke to Ahnu when prompted by prayer, but did she see fit to do so for everyone? Were those that did not fit the narrow category of “hero” sorted into a lot beneath her acknowledgement? This wasn’t just something Ahnu felt like they could ask people, lest they give off the appearance of someone insane—or  _ worse— _ reveal themself as one revered by the Goddess. The eventuality of revealing themself as a divine pariah was still one that they wanted to put off for as long as possible—though they started to wonder if that was even an option anymore. 

Not that it was something they weren’t capable of hiding—their three days in Kakariko have taught them that much—but rather, if it was an option they could afford, morally. Now that they’d spent time in a village, the home of a people who were kind to them, and a people who were waiting  _ for  _ them specifically, they couldn’t help but feel that twinge of guilt that they tried so hard to repress, unsuccessfully. Or at least, to keep at bay, just beneath the current of distraction to the point that any passing subject of intrigue could drown out all else, what with them so fully engrossed in the contemporary. 

The very moment they desisted, willfully or otherwise, from smothering the spark of liability, it burned away their self-centered reluctance like it were a dry grass they hid in, and that made their head begin to hurt. 

They didn’t want to disappoint them. To  _ leave _ . To make them stand by for someone who couldn’t be—wasn’t—the savior they  _ needed _ . 

They didn’t want to be the person the King told them they were. The person this village awaited. The person  _ this  _ Goddess commanded them to be, just as she would tell them to “bring peace to Hyrule” while neglecting to elaborate any further. 

Was that selfish? To want nothing to do with a life that granted the purpose and direction their current floundering was devoid of? Even if it was terrifying?

Was that fair? For  _ her  _ to force the expectation upon them? To never answer them when they asked  _ why _ ? Was she even listening? Or did their struggles not really matter to her, so long as they pursued the path she’d set out for them, with no acknowledgement— _ no regard _ —for how much they hurt? 

—How much they hurt, right now, as their nails bit into the stone and silver of her statue’s cheek—yet another migraine causing their head to throb, and their vision to blur?

Did she even care?

And if she didn’t, why should they?

—And just then, their sight left them entirely, as if  _ replaced— _

* * *

_ She looked down at them, paying no heed to the tip of her divine blade as it dug into the stone beneath her chin.  _

_ They came to see her again. Standing before her, a vile indifference settled into their own features, smothering the gleam in their eyes and stilling the hand that nearly burned under the pressure of its threat of treason—though, perhaps that was just the ache they felt, gripping the green leather wrap of the hilt so tightly.  _

_ Their eyes settled on her’s. Her placid countenance didn’t fool them. From this very angle, in so late and dark of a night where rain threatened to fall any moment, the firelight that came from behind the statue made the shadows around her face and under her eyes look deeper.  _

_ They exaggerated a non-existent expression, giving off the impression of disappointment—of shame.  _

_ All of which was directed down, towards themself.  _

_ Their near-venomous apathy gave way under narrowed eyes, as a cold wave of—something—began to trickle down from their forehead. It felt as if their very blood had been replaced by a thick, icy slush that scraped and scrubbed every inch beneath their skin into a painfully numb complacency, chilling whatever feverish apprehension that would have given them pause.  _

_ They dug the tip of her sword deeper into her neck. _

_ Maybe they were just upset. Angry. Tired and frustrated and trying to find something they knew they wouldn’t. Maybe they thought that if the empyrean metal delved deep enough, some semblance of care, or concern, or anything even remotely kind would trickle out—but no. Under the grey and rugged surface of sun bleached stone was a bleak and definitive neutrality.  _

_ No reaction. No words. No regard. Nothing.  _

_ Their eyes traveled down the incredible blade of the blessed weapon—the only thing she’d ever given them. The physical embodiment of their anointed curse. The symbol of their suffering. Their eyes caught on the true icon that embellished the sword, on the blunt and ineffectual swell of the metal—another testament to the pontifical disaster that was it’s design, right up there with it’s grandiose winged-guard and unnecessary upper pommel.  _

_ Three triangles—the likes of which they refused to dignify with the moniker that endowed them so much significance. Those, like her, were nowhere to be seen. Why glorify that which taunts them with it’s absence? _

**_“I hate you.”_ **

_ Words were rare from them now. Most situations hardly warranted the fortitude it required for a mere whisper to grace their lips. It took effort. It took drive. It took a clear head and a sense of purpose.  _

_ They pulled their arm in close, disconnecting the tip of the sword they despised from it’s mother, their attention solely on her now.  _

_ The onrush of that cold ichor that sapped their dread traveled lower, spreading through their veins as if it really were their blood. The coolness granted a twisted sort of clarity—the kind that urged on the hand that held the sword, rather then staying it. Their muscle was rigid as her vessel, strung tight like the cord of a bow ready to snap.  _

_ They took a single step forward— _

**_‘I HATE YOU.’_ **

_ —and with a single outward strike, the air erupted in a burst of rubble.  _

_ They held themself up only by the virtues of her ‘gift’ now, kneeling up straight with only their head held low. They couldn’t look up at her now, or even at her blade. To move their neck but a fraction would force them to see the Goddess and the triforce carved into her sword—their sword—both of which bore down on them in godly magnitude.  _

_ Not tauntingly, as the divine usually did. Not angrily, or even in disbelief.  _

_ Just there. _

_ Ever present and unshakable—even if broken.  _

_ They envied that, too. The same could not be said for themself.  _

_ Her head sat askew on her body now, sans a neck. She now looked down at them oddly because of it, where they’d plunged their sword into the ground before her quaint altar, and crumpled to the grassy ground of the islet.  _

_ It were as if Hylia herself were tilting her head at the display, confused as to how they could possibly bow to her after such an act—sword held out before themself, head hung, with tears streaming down a dark and maliciously sad face.  _

* * *

Had it begun to rain? 

Ahnu wondered if the water they’d been waiting for had finally begun to pelt the earth. Why else was their skin damp with a thin sheen that wasn’t present moments before? Why else was their vision blurred with a wetness they couldn’t source? Only, no, it wasn’t raining—they couldn’t smell the incoming showers in the distance anymore. 

When they blinked away the water that stung at the corners of their eyes, they saw no blade dug into the ground before them. Just their hand firmly planted on either side of them, grasping at clumps of grass and dirt and small blue flowers that littered the islet. Where had it—?

Ahnu raised their head slowly, cautiously, as they looked back up at the Goddess statue. They were still kneeling, only less reverential—more afraid. 

No longer did her head sit on her shoulders at a strange angle. She was put together again, tall and regal with only an asymmetrical web of silver to remind that she was ever made un-whole—the lot of which was obscured in the front by an offering of cloth. She looked on and over them, instead of down. 

As Ahnu stared up in disbelief, their head was awash in an uncanny numbness. A sickly feverishness abased with the ache of their mind, leaving them shivering in the cool night air. It was with little relief that they began to remember where— _ when _ —they were. 

As time began to settle back into place, they became aware of the dull ringing that had previously overtaken their hearing, finally fading and giving way to the sound of the wind and incessant wood chimes. Two nights ago, the unending ambiance was gentle on their ears, propagating a meditative sort of vacuity. Now, though, it was oppressively unrelenting, denying them even a moment of clarity to gather their thoughts. 

Ahnu’s arms gave out under them at some point, and they were brought lower to the ground. They’d look absolutely devout to anyone that couldn’t see their face—twisted into an expression that was somehow ugly and also vacant—pressed into the grass. At some point, their hair bun had come mostly undone, making it so that their dark locks pooled around them. 

Their eyes were shut so tightly, it would have given them a notable tension headache of the skin around their skull wasn’t rendered senseless by an evident lack of proper blood flow, garnering most of their already fickle and slight as-is attention. That was also likely why they hadn’t been expecting any sort of company. 

“Are you alright?” 

Ahnu flinched at the sound, even more-so when a hand settled on their upper back in what had to be a reassuring gesture. 

So absorbed in their own mess of a mind, they hadn’t heard the approach of the archer-guard, Cado. 

Ahnu’s head whipped around, nearly headbutting the man. He jolted back some at their rapid movement, removing his hand in a quick splayed gesture that probably meant to indicate some level of fault along the lines of, ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have touched you.’ His face certainly read as much—though, that could have just been a reaction to whatever wretched expression Ahnu was wearing at the time. Their dismay melted into dizziness almost immediately, softening their bearing some.

Still, Cado remained ever concerned in the presence of someone that was clearly in distress.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” he said, voice low and gentle. “Are you alright? Do you need assistance of any kind?”

Ahnu stared at him blankly for too long, and his brows furrowed in response. Catching on to their own despondency a little too late, Ahnu began to shake their head vehemently, both to answer his question and shake off what was left of their disorientation. 

If Cado was convinced, he didn’t show it. 

“Why don’t I take you back to the inn?” he offered, rising to his feet slowly, as if to not startle them further with any sudden movement. “Some rest should do you well.”

He held his hand out for them to take, intent on helping them up to their feet. He didn’t want to push the limits of someone who was clearly unsteady and possibly ill—what with how they collapsed so suddenly. 

Which is why it came as such a surprise to Cado that they turned away from him, their crouch morphing into a sprint in the blink of an eye. 

* * *

Claree should have expected nothing less than a disaster of a sleep schedule after sleeping a full twelve hours in the middle of yesterday. After a full day of work up at the townhouse, minor chores, and catching up on her backlog of commissions, she fought hard to stay awake as the sun set. She was determined to right her internal clock, and go to bed at her usual hour, which was fast on approach. 

Normally, The shop closed at 8:00PM on the dot, and Claree usually made her way to bed around an hour after that. Admittedly, she’d been... less than strict when it came to maintaining a personal timetable, having been running herself ragged for months on end, ever since...

Claree shook her head, partially to shake those thoughts out of her head, and partially to wake herself up. No use getting herself down now. She had just a few more piles of stock to put away, and then it was bedtime. Work first. Though, maybe that itself was the issue. 

She had to give herself some clemency, after all. It was a lot easier to run the shop back when she only had to do quarter day shifts, so of course she’d feel run down after nearly a year of non-stop work. Granted, she didn’t have to do this to herself—it just seemed so much easier to focus on her job than to deal with her problems.

Clearly, pushing off her latent issues only served to her detriment. Perhaps she’d cut down the operating hours of Enchantment, and maybe close up shop entirely for once a day every week. Considering that a fair amount of the village, as well as her younger employee, have been hassling her about taking a break and slowing down with her work, she doubted that anyone would mind. It’d been so long since she’d been on a picnic with her nieces...

If only she could manage to hire another tailor. Seeing how there were only four young adults in the village, one of which being her, and all of whom had their own duties, there was no way she could get the help she’d need from within Kakariko. Lasli was a good greeter and custodian—her help earlier in the day being the main reason that the store was looking better than it had in the last year—but as far as sewing and coordination went, the girl had two left hands. 

She was so caught up in her final task of the night, as well as her daydreaming, that Claree nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard a pounding at the front door of the store. Luckily she didn’t drop the stack of folded clothes she was holding, tucking them away into a shelf of the backroom before making her way to the operative portion of her shop. She slowed for a moment when she got a good look around the supply and work space, which had been one cluster of a mess not even a day ago. She felt a small bout of pride and satisfaction at seeing everything so neat and put together—which quickly fizzled away as soon as another round of rasping came from the front. 

“I’m coming!” she yelled, only a tad frustrated. 

As she made her way past the checking desk, she idly wondered who it would be, banging away at Enchantment’s front door so insistently. If it was a traveler, surely they would have read the shop sign with a listing of the operating hours—or, you know, the decently sized “Closed” sign that was hanging at roughly eye-level on the door. 

If it was one of the villagers, then the matter at hand was likely more serious. 

Slightly concerned, she unlocked and opened the door, only to immediately be made a GREAT deal more concerned. 

Standing on the porch of her store was indeed a traveler—the individual in question being a shivering Ahnu, who wore nothing but their underclothes, a leather bag, and a baldric worn backwards that was adorned with their weapons on their front, clutching a ball of what Claree could only assume to be their clothing. 

It was a distressing sight to say the least, and one that brought a medley of none-too-pleasant scenarios to her mind. 

“Wha—“ Claree stammered, nearly aghast. “Are—are you okay?! What happened—“

“Khuh—cluh, clo-ose.” the adventurer muttered far too quietly, eyes darting around rapidly, scanning the interior of the shop behind the tailor, never once settling on her own. “Nuh-knee, need.” Their hands, occupied by their old garb, fidgeted as they tried to follow along with the words they were struggling to vocalize. They sounded like they could barely manage to bring their voice above the volume of a whisper, and couldn’t make up the difference in sign while they held their clothes in a white-knuckled grip. 

Their breathing came in quick gasps, leaving Claree clueless as to whether their stuttering was a result of some sort of exertion, or if this was an instance of whatever speech impediment they must have had to necessitate their knowing of Hand-Speak. Most people don’t bother to ask  _ why  _ someone has to communicate in sign, seeing how some found it rude and others just plain redundant if the person you were taking to was a stranger—especially when the personal reasons someone might have for electing to utilize the language of gestures might be glaringly obvious, like if someone were deaf or mute. There are people that exist on some portion of the binary that is the host of medical and psychological issues that limit their speech, and sometimes, there are just people who prefer it, like any other language. 

Claree now understood that Ahnu likely resided on the former end of the spectrum, and that their penchant for switching between talking and signing was indicative of the state of their mind and mood. Whatever it was that afflicted them so that they could hardly utter a word, was certainly aggravated due to their distress. 

“Close?” she questioned, her own voice hushed but still urgent. It was true, the store had closed around a half hour ago—but that couldn’t have been what they were talking about. “Oh! Your clothes! You—you need them?”

Ahnu nodded frantically in response. 

“Ah-ah! Well, okay—“ Claree replied, looking around behind them. Was that it? They just needed their clothing? There was no way that could have been the issue that had them so clearly upset, but she saw nothing obvious outside—no yelling, or someone following them. Not exactly reassuring. “Come! Come in!” she beckoned, wanting to get them off of the streets and inside where it was definitely safe. 

She closed the door behind them, before racing off around Ahnu and into the backroom.

“I’ve got your clothes right over here! Just give me a moment—“ she called, she swiped for the neat little bundle she packed in preparation for them picking it up the next morning, spinning around to meet them back in the front. “Ah! But you might, uhm, want to try it on? Make sure it fits?”

Wordlessly, Ahnu set their clothes down to the side, along with their baldric and bag, and took the package from her when she extended it to her. With little instruction on Claree’s part, they quickly donned the Stealth gear, only faltering when it came to wrapping the metalloid plate guards to their forearms, considering that those were the only bits of armor left unattached to the upper ensemble of garb and harness. 

“Would...” she began, cautious in her approach and potential suggestion. “Would you like some help?” she offered, as gently as she could. She wasn’t exactly afraid of offending them, so much as she was worried she might be pressing them too much as is. Whatever it was that had them here was obviously serious. 

She didn’t take it all too personally when they shook their head without so much as looking up at her, far too focused on haphazardly wrapping their forearms. 

To be frank, the tailor was still suffering from a slight bout of whiplash. Not even five minutes ago, she was wrapping up her work for the day, but now she was watching a frenzied Hylian don a full set of stealth gear at a feverish pace. All this, and she didn’t even know why. 

“Are you okay?” She finally asked, just as they finished wrapping the scarf around their neck. 

‘It fits.’ they signed.

“Wh—“ she noised almost questioningly, not having expected such a response, before actually processing what they were signing about. “Oh. The clothes.”

‘Thank you.’ they added, still refusing to meet her worried gaze. ‘I’m sorry.’

They gave Claree no time to process what they meant that time, quickly grabbing their things, and speeding out the door before she could even think to ask “What for?”

When she raced over to the door herself, only to look out and find no trace of them in any direction of the dark night, she concluded that they were probably referring to having bothered her after hours. She wished then, that they’d stayed long enough for her to reassure them that it was alright, considering how much they seemed like they needed it. 

She couldn’t have possibly known just how much more they were apologizing for, and how insufficient the simple circle drawn on their chest was to compensate for it all. 

* * *

Ahnu had a hard time juggling the lot of their items as they ran, having slung their leather backpack over one shoulder and their baldric over the other, still cradling their ball of clothing—wrapped inside of which was their mask and the Slate. After a full 20 minute sprint, they’d made it to the East bridge of the village road that led into the South, where they stopped for a moment with the intent of stuffing their excess garb into their bag and affixing their Slate back into the familiar position on their hip. 

After fumbling with the latch on their backpack for longer than they’d have liked—hands still shaking under the duress of far too many things they lacked any sort of context or clarity to process in so little time—they promptly gave up on the endeavor. Cranking their head over their shoulder to confirm their solitude, Ahnu then looked out over the village, their position seated above all of Kakariko, though not by much. Through the willows and matsu pines, the houses and the countless arrays of chime poles, the soft yellow glow of lanterns and the neon specks of fireflies—Ahnu couldn’t see all of it, like they had when they first stumbled upon the village up at the swordsman’s Shrine with Cottla, almost three days ago. 

It was still beautiful though, what they could descry, and their chest filled with an unfounded amount of fondness and sorrow at the sight (though, perhaps not as unfounded as they have liked to think). There was a soft sort of familiarity to be had here. It was the type that was kinder than it was uncanny, and it was only now that they realized just how  _ desperate  _ they were for that kindness in a world where they typically found only aversion to that of the known—as in, that which they  _ knew  _ they recognized on more than just a factual level. 

They’d never realized just how terrified they were of becoming invested in something, or rather, of uncovering an old series of devotions—of attachments—and all the burdens that came with them. Perhaps this is where their disdain stemmed from. Some subconscious defense towards the possibly known, pushing them away from anything that resembled the potentially intimate. 

It was all the more ridiculous, in hindsight, how long it took them to figure out something so glaringly obvious. Yet another facet of the reality of their life they’d been avoiding for so long, without even fully comprehending their own deliberate strides in obfuscation. 

The voices, the hallucinations, the silent princess and the Goddess statue and that  _ sword _ that they swore they could almost  _ recognize _ —

_ Memories _ . That’s what they were. 

Ahnu had never even considered the possibility that whoever they used to be, they might become again. That whoever they were now, was only a temporary occupant in their shell of a body and mind. 

That eventually,  _ they would remember _ . 

And that thought terrified them more than anything else. 

Shaking their head harshly, Ahnu yanked their Slate off of where they’d only just sloppily tied it to their hip. They were used to tampering with it’s medley of settings now, easily storing away their clothes and mask, and only having to spend a half minute adjusting it’s carrier options to store away the entirety of the leather bag and it’s contents—all without even having to make contact with their supplies as they usually did. Considering their current state of mind, they hardly acknowledged the increase of their finesse in their dealings with the Slate. 

Without giving the scope of the village another glance, Ahnu carried on at a hurried pace, not exactly walking, but not quite running as they had deemed necessary to do not even a half hour ago. There was no one following them after all, and no incoming individual on the trail ahead either. They stared straight onwards, gaze focused so intensely on the mountain pass up ahead that was showily emerging around the bend of the road against the cliffs. In the distance, they could just barely make out the outline of a series of panel-chime poles, and a gateway arch that clearly signified the extent of Kakariko’s boundary. 

So concentrated on the task of vacating the village, Ahnu failed to notice their passing of a rather large tree—under which a fire and an individual sat—until they’d already progressed beyond the dual chime stands that bore a single lantern each. Stopping in their tracks most abruptly, Ahnu’s head swung around so quickly that they only succeeded in disorienting themself briefly. 

After a few seconds of their vision blurring out and then back into focus, Ahnu’s eyes settled on those of someone who was clearly an elderly Sheikah, idly poking away at the blaze with a tree branch. 

They froze in place, having not expected to find a resident in the far corner of Kakariko, especially at such a late hour. Not a guard—she was too old and frail looking—so possibly a village greeter or guide of some sort? That seemed like too much of a burden on someone of her age though, considering the relative isolation and time of night. She was probably just one of the residents that preferred to remain active in the night.

To the credit of her stolid demeanor, she only smiled up at Ahnu serenely, completely unbothered by the clear oddity that was the armed Hylian dressed in Sheikah stealth gear. 

“Hello there, Traveler.” she said, retracting the branch she was using to tend the fire. “I believe I’ve seen you around the village recently. Taking your leave now, are you?”

Ahnu did little more than nod, their eyes more focused on the orange glowing embers that floated up from the fire than on the inky red of the elders own eyes, now. 

“Ah, I see.” she replied. “Well I hope you’ve found your stay here pleasant.” Bringing the sturdy stick in close to herself, she proceed to use it as one might a cane, attempting to hoist herself up and off of the bed of short grass and dried leaves she’d been practically laid out upon. She appeared to be struggling some, visibly favoring her left leg as she worked her way off of the ground. The branch slipped out from under her due to a poor angle of positioning, and she fell only the few centimeters she gained, hitting the ground with a small “oof!”

“Oh, I’m sorry you have to see me like this...” she began, taking a moment to breathe before she geared herself for another attempt. “But I seem to have twisted my ankle...”

She was injured? That certainly made sense, all things considered. Had she been out here for the lot of the night, on account of no one finding her in her current state of relative immobility?

Now, more concerned for her than they were about anything else, Ahnu closed the distance between themself and her, offering both hands. She smiled at them sweetly, gladly accepting the help. 

“Thank you, dearie.” she said as they hoisted her up effortlessly. “It’s awfully kind of you to help out an old woman in need. My granddaughter must be worried sick.”

As much as they would have liked to depart from the conversation and from Kakariko altogether, Ahnu couldn’t manage to do so out of worry for the elder. They didn’t like the idea and potential (self-imagined) risk of it, but they were probably going to offer to assist her back to her home, wherever that may be in the village. Nervously, they looked back over down the road they’d only just come, still seeing no one off in the dark. 

“Grandmother!” came a distant voice, jolting Ahnu out of their brief confliction. Their head swung all around, still finding no one in sight. The elder only chuckled in response to the call. 

“Ah! That must be her now.” she laughed lightly. “Feel free to continue on your way, dear. She’ll be finding me soon enough.”

Nodding at her only somewhat skeptically, Ahnu gently released the old Sheikah’s hands after moving her closer to the tree, so that she could lean against it. Pausing for a moment, they bent down, retrieving her discarded branch and handing it to her. 

“Thank you again, traveler.” she said, accepting the proxy cane with a grateful nod—only where her head returned to level, her eyes remained fixed down below. Her face twisted some, into what Ahnu found to be a rather peculiar expression.

“Say, traveler...” she hesitated, eyes now doing a thorough scan of the Hylian, down and them up again, before her eyes settled on their own. 

Ahnu stared back, completely lost as to what she was evidently on about.

“Where did you get that...” she pointed down to the left side of their hip, “object hanging from your waist?”

Ahnu took in a piercing inhale, their entire body going rigid.  _ They forgot about the Slate.  _

Of course they did. They spent nearly three full days hiding it, not having to worry about anyone linking their possession of it to their identity. It was never once an issue. They’d gotten too comfortable in regards to it, relaxing their terms of concealment on account of their imminent desertion of Kakariko. A clear mistake in their part. 

Before the elder could even think to reiterate her inquiry, Ahnu had spun around, fleeing from the presence of yet another well-meaning Sheikah for the night, and from Kakariko altogether. 

* * *

_ “Ahnu...” he said, as his regal form began to diminish, overtaken by the teal, spectral flame that fueled his otherworldly presence. There was a sense of finality to the word—their name.  _

_ While he stared down at them, they looked down at the stylized visage of the white bird that embellished the maroon cloth of his gift. They clutched the paraglider tightly by it’s frame, to the point that their knuckles were white and the tendons in their fingers ached.  _

_ “I know...” he continued, solemn as he truly was, that air of significance and sadness having always bled through his disguise, little to their naive notice. “—that you don’t understand. That what I’m saying right now is...too much for you.” _

_ He sighed, an action that was ubiquitously redundant considering his state of existence. A subconscious holdover, maybe, from when he was alive and felt disappointment at every turn. Now, did he feel exasperation at the situation as it regarded them, or himself?  _

_ “I don’t know whether you will take solace in this fact, or not...” He shook his head, the only part of his rapidly dissipating form left visible, hardly to the notice of the Hylian that outright refused to look at him. A fair reaction, all things considered, and as such he took no offense to it.  _

_ Instead, his mostly translucent arms raised, nearly invisible hands resting on either shoulder, more felt than seen. They weren’t sure if they flinched or not, but their muscles were pulled too taunt to belie whether or not they did. They certainly didn’t appreciate the ghostly contact, as faint as it was, but then again, they didn’t exactly appreciate much of anything about him.  _

_ Yet somehow, his gentle hold on their shoulders seemed to be the only thing keeping them standing at that point.  _

_ “But one day, you will understand.” he echoed. “And when you do, you’ll never forgive me.” _

* * *

After two full hours of running, Ahnu had collapsed under a large oak, the first tree they’d seen since they started (more like escaped) down the South road from Kakariko. 

Their breathing was ragged and frantic at the time, though they honestly weren’t sure if it was from the exertion or their obvious panic. The fact that they would have preferably been asleep by this time might have also had something to do with it, as it only took moments after they’d hit the ground for them to fall unconscious. 

They were calmer now, but in a benumbed sort of way rather than as a result of self-conciliation. Make no mistake—they certainly hadn’t made their peace with literally any of the things that had distressed them prior. The mental strain had simply tired themself into complacency, and most conveniently, allowed all their worries to effortlessly sink into that dark pit of repression that Ahnu would go right back to ignoring. 

Just like the last words of the late king, before he fizzled away into thin air. 

Though, before they tucked that dream of a memory as recent as it was unpleasant back into the dark abyss of obscurity, they couldn’t help but linger. 

Even now, they were still processing the things he’d said to them. The reality he’d bestowed. 

Blinking their eyes, they were assuaged by the morning light that peeked through a sparse cloud-cover and the mountain walls, their brief nap having evidently turned into a decently long night of rest, despite the fact that “decent” couldn’t exactly apply to the quality of their sleep. Clambering up from where they sat at the base of the tree, they were immediately assaulted by a stiffness of the joints and muscles that bemoaned their horrendous position for the duration of the night.

After a few minutes of stretching, they successfully alleviated most of their discomfort, and promptly pulled a few apples out of their Slate to consume. They really did miss the convenience that the device afforded them, but as they looked at the opening screen for just a little too long, they couldn’t help but focus on the icon of the Sheikah—the eye that stared right on through them. 

They turned to look back down the mountain road, eyeing the direction they’d come from. Then, with little debate and less emotional autonomy than they’d have liked, they simply stood back up, brushed themself off, and continued on South.

_‘I’ll come back.’_ Ahnu thought to themself, almost believing the words they so clearly enunciated in their mind, in that strange mishmash of languages they were unaware their own conscious spoke natively. _‘Eventually.’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu says fuck major plot beat, we're skipping all that jazz. They're going to learn that procrastination is hell at some point, but hopefully not soon. Where will they go now? Who knows--They sure as all hells don't. 
> 
> It's here, after this chapter, that I'd like to point out that I've just posted all the chapters up until now in one day, which might not be clear to future readers that don't bother with tracking the publication date relative to the update status, you know, like a normal person who wouldn't bother or even think to do that. I wanted to write out as many chapters as it would take for this project to seem real to me, which basically means that I feel that after this chapter, the story is getting started for REAL. I've got one more chapter written up to post, so come join me on chapter 14! Thanks for reading along!


	14. Chapter 14--  Getting back into Stride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heading South from Kakariko in less of a hurry now, Ahnu meets a rather strange fellow and potential new friend, before they find themself at the Dueling Peaks Stable, which they soon learn has the most unfortunate backyard history.

It was just over two hours later, during their trek down the mountain road, did Ahnu encounter yet another oddity to add to the quickly growing list of strange things they’d seen in their short new-life. 

A being that looked to be an absolute GIANT of a tree-spirit, like an overgrown Korok, appeared to be performing some sort of frantic dance next to an oak just off to the side of the path, near the ridge of the cliff that dropped off into a river down below. 

Still a bit too emotionally drained to bother with any level of precaution, or even their typical trepidation when approaching something or someone new, Ahnu settled on walking right up to the unusual tree spirit before their mind could even catch up to whatever the hells they were doing. 

“Shalaka...” the spirit seemed to sing quietly to himself, paying little attention to the Hylian that observed him. 

The being was certainly just as bizarre as Ahnu had initially gauged him to be, boasting an almost disconcerting size, but a rather unintimidating—well, everything else. He definitely had to have been a Korok of some sort, now that Ahnu was examining him up close, but they had yet to meet one that carried around a satchel as opposed to a berry branch or spinning-leaf twig that propagated flight. It was interesting to see such a mundane object being toted around by such an individual, though certainly not as interesting as the rest of him. Where most of the smaller tree spirits boasted simple sprouts or sparse branch-like extensions from their head, with maybe a single leaf or two growing from the extremities, the individual before them hosted enough foliage to be mistaken for a young tree. His particular leaf mask, held aloft by the usual nose-like protrusion that Koroks possessed, bore a striking similarity to a beard. That feature of his, combined with the curious protuberances just above that looked an awful lot like a bushy set of eyebrows, gave him the appearance of what the average Hyrulian would perceive as an old man. 

The comparison would have made Ahnu giggle, were they in a better mood. 

“Shalaka?!” the large Korok sang a tad more urgently, now apparently aware that the Hylian before him was actually staring right AT him, rather than through him. “You! You can see me?!” he asked, still maintaining a singsong like quality. 

Upon hearing just how high pitched his voice was, Ahnu couldn’t help but chuckle some. The contrast of his look to his demeanor and pitch was just too much. they did manage to nod though, which pleased the Korok greatly. 

“Shala-zah! Shala-zah!” he continued to sing, much to Ahnu’s amusement. “It’s been nearly 100 years since anyone has been able to see me without any help! The last person to do so was a small Hylian-looking kid, like you!” He swayed from side to side in a wistful sort of glee, before adding, "I really liked them. They told their friends about me, so all of them could see me too!"

They vaguely recalled reading about how uncommon it was for people to witness the spirits of the trees, back at the first stable they’d ever visited. Cutting into their brief recollection, was the large Korok’s funny voice. 

“I’m Hestu,” he said, in what sounded to be as serious a tone as he could manage, which admittedly, didn’t inspire much urgency in Ahnu. “—and I need your help!”

Now THAT got their attention, and almost instantly, Ahnu was all hands on deck—ready to assist. As they listened to him explain how a dear set of instruments were stolen from him, they couldn’t help but think about how...recently familiar his name was...

* * *

A quick trek back up a short length of the mountain and one battle with a trio of black Bokoblins later (if you could call blowing them off the mountain ridge they camped precariously close to with a rune bomb a battle), Ahnu had retrieved the pair of coveted maracas from the monster’s chest, as was heading back down to deliver them to their owner. 

They elected not to think too hard about the reasons as to why a group of the pig-men saw fit to harass a tree spirit, or why the tree spirit was incapable of retrieving the instruments himself. They figured that the maracas being held hostage in a chest locked by a dark seal of soul-binding magic was enough of an excuse, seeing how it required the defeat of all the monsters sworn to it to open. As to what value the Bokoblins saw in the shake-sticks? Ahnu was stumped. 

They chalked it up to the monsters being weird and dumb, as they had an established habit of locking away anything they liked in the magical boxes. Usually they found weapons, arrows, and even some pretty gems in the horned chests—though they tried not to think about the time they found a rotting deer head in one. 

“SHALA-KALA!” Hestu cried out in joy when Ahnu diligently presented him with the maracas, making them wince some at his volume. “Those are...those are my maracas!” He did a cute little jig in place as he sang, “Please giiiiiive them to meeeeeeeee!”

“SHAAAAAA-LAAAAAH-KAAAAAAH!” He hollered in happiness as Ahnu did just that, prompting them to cover their ears as he proceeded to dance with the maracas now, some of his erratic arm movements making a lot more sense now that he held an instrument in each nubby hand of his. But, when he shook about his maracas, no sound came. 

“Huh?” Hestu noised, stopping his celebration as he shook his instruments more experimentally than rhythmically. Still, no sound came. “Whaaaat?! There’s something wrong with my maracas.”

Ahnu tilted their head at him as he shook one of the hollow instruments up close to their face.

“The Korok seeds inside are gone!” he dramatically declared. “I go through all the trouble of tracking them down, and they’re empty! How am I supposed to dance now?” Bemoaning his terrible situation, he followed up his rhetorical question with a small and sad “Shoko...”

Korok seeds? 

“If I had just one Korok seed, I could sing, dance, and use my powers to help you.” Hestu added, continuing to ramble on while Ahnu only paid half of their attention to him, too busy mulling over their own brewing revelation. “You see, I have the power of inventory expansion! I use my music to enchant the bags of travelers that are nice to trees!”

“Oh!” Ahnu exclaimed, their newfound excitement relatively unrelated to his statement, grabbing for the Slate on their belt. They _knew_ they’d heard his name before! This was the individual the first Korok they’d ever encountered had mentioned! 

“The children of the forest must have taken the Korok seeds from my beloved maracas.” Hestu lamented as Ahnu set about withdrawing a couple of the seeds they had been storing in the Slate, hardly to the larger Koroks notice. “I never thought I’d be the target of one of their pranks. Shoko...I bet they’re the reason my maracas ended up so far away from home...”

Ahnu held up a small handful of the pebble sized seeds to Hestu’s face, the offering still going mostly unnoticed. Having pulled out several of them at once, Ahnu became aware of two mildly surprising things: that they had accumulated FAR more seeds than they had ever realized, never bothering to keep track of them, and that the seeds had a very...pungent smell. It wasn’t exactly bad, per say, but it was certainly strong when they had enough of them in one place to strengthen their collective odor, like stale sap. Hestu seemed to notice the smell, too. 

“Wait...” he mumbled, sniffing the air. “Do you...you have Korok seeds!”

Ahnu nodded, attempting to give them to him, intent on pulling out the rest of them since he’d confirmed that they were what he was looking for. He reached down into their hand and took...only one?

Ahnu looked at him, very confused, as he pressed the seed into one maraca, the golden gleam of the speck disappearing as it fazed into the decorated wood. 

“SHALAKA!” Hestu trilled, starting to bounce in excitement. “Let me see your bag!”

Still holding a few Korok seeds, Ahnu looked down to their not empty hand, and then back up at him inquisitively. When he only stood there, still bouncing happily, they decided to just shrug the whole thing off and go with it. Magical beings were weird. 

Still holding their Slate in their other hand, they brought it up before themself, and were about to withdraw the leather backpack they’d bought back at Kakariko when the large Korok had interrupted them. 

“Hah ha! That’s a funny looking bag!” he laughed some more, before beginning to dance in earnest. “But okay, here I go! Shaky sha-kah!”

“Uh—“ Ahnu tried to correct him, but he was already shaking and twirling all about, too focused on his little ritual. Just like everything else about him, it was pretty cute, so Ahnu didn’t bother to stop him, seeing no harm in the misunderstanding. They gave him a small, albeit still confused smile as he gave one last twirl with a triumphant shout. 

“Dah-na-na-na-naaaaaaaa!” he cheered. “Take a look at your bag!”

“I don’t think—“ Ahnu began to speak, but was interrupted yet again—only this time, it was by the Slate, which vibrated in their hand. Looking down at it, Ahnu’s first assumption was that it had managed to pick up on a Shrine that rested somewhere nearby, but when they looked down at the screen, they were surprised to see a new message pop up. 

{INVENTORY UPDATE ACCEPTED.}

What?

The notification then brought them to their weapons tab, which had always been mostly empty, only boasting eight active slots—and Ahnu watched in amazement as an _ninth_ was added.

_What._

“Your weapons stash has been expanded!” Hestu declared, the statement mostly redundant but not entirely useless, as Ahnu looked up at him completely bewildered and not entirely convinced that he’d managed to alter the programming of a piece of ancient technology with magic. “Y’know, it’s been such a long time since I’ve enchanted such a funny looking bag”. He added, which was something Ahnu didn’t analyze as closely as they probably should have. “Want me to do it again?”

Ahnu nodded frenetically at the offer, depositing the requested two seed into his nubby hand. They were VERY enthusiastic about the notion that their inventory could be expanded so easily. One more dance later, and their melee weapons tab had a tenth slot.

Ahnu was about to pull out the rest of their remaining 63 seeds, when Hestu disappointingly revealed his need to depart. 

“Sorry, but I have to go. I’ve been gone for almost three months, and I need to get back home as soon as I can now that I’ve got my maracas back, or Grandpa will yell at me again.” Hestu explained, putting his maracas away in his satchel, and instead pulling a single hand away with a twirly twig that was FAR too small for a seedling his size. “But I still need Korok seeds, so bring some to Korok Forest if you find any more, okay?”

He didn’t seem to care that Ahnu held another handful of the seeds in their hand, and his twirly twig didn’t seem to care that he was several dozen times bigger than it, as it began to quickly spin and lift him off of the ground—all the while Hestu was waving to Ahnu with his free hand.

“Goodbye, Hylian-looking friend!” he called to them, which was yet another statement Ahnu neglected to further evaluate as they waved back to him.

Magical beings were _really_ weird. 

And now that he was gone, Ahnu finally beheld the expanse of ruins below and beyond them, littering a distant field so profusely that they didn’t need the scope to see it. 

* * *

After an evening of foraging off the beaten path, a night spent sleeping at an abandoned camp under a dilapidated bridge, and a several hour trek that lasted from the morning well into the noon, Ahnu finally found themself at the Dueling Peaks Stable. 

When they approached a fork in the path just beyond the Kakariko bridge, they stumbled upon a signpost that directed them East, towards the Hylian community they’d heard a fair amount of in the tales of travelers—Hateno Village. Relatively optimistic that it would be a less emotionally cumbersome and mentally taxing destination, Ahnu started down the road.

Only to turn back half an hour in, when it became clear that the majority of the speckled ruins and wreckage they’d seen back on the mountain ridge prior were actually the remains of _dozens upon dozens of Guardians._

To say the least, they retraced their path and continued upon the Southward road. Hateno could wait. 

They rested at the communal cooking pot, preparing a simple meal of salted and spiced vegetables and mushrooms, intent on fueling up for their venturing to the Shrine they eyed from across then wok that was seated in the middle of a small and scenic waterfall-fed spring, surrounded by a nest of thorns. As they ate, they listened intently to the ramblings of an novice astronomy researcher who had a particular obsession with the lunar cycle—specifically the phenomena of the blood moon. 

“and so, for the last 100 years now, at the end of every month when the clock strikes midnight, the sky turns red and a full moon rises…” Hino lectured them, so enraptured in his own account of the monthly event. “At that moment, monsters that had been previously defeated will come back to life—But why do the monsters return to life? Why does it only happen when the sky turns red?” he questioned openly, more so to add to the enigma than to seek an answer from a young traveler such as Ahnu. 

“No one really has the answers to those questions. It’s a mysterious phenomenon…” he added, before looking around himself conspiratorially, and supplying, “But between you and me, I think the power of the blood moon is growing. 

‘Really?’ Ahnu signed with a free hand.

“Oh, yes!” Hino responded enthusiastically, his face lighting up with how happy he was to have found someone he’s managed to keep the interest of for so long in regards to his favorite subject. “Ever since even before the great tragedy—“ 

Ahnu didn’t fail to pick up on the synonym he used in lieu of “Calamity.”

“—there were accounts of monster presence and vitality increasing exponentially! Granted, there are few written chronicles back at Hateno, and most of the information are records copied down from second-hand oral tales—“ He quickly and lowly added, as if he didn’t want to give Ahnu enough time to process what he was saying for fear of them suspecting some level of fallacy in his supporting argument. “But! Practically every elder you meet can confirm the claim! And in my full 40 years in this world, I can certainly say I’ve witnessed the enhancement of monster forces!”

Ahnu thought back to the conversation they’d had well over a month ago, with the traveling merchant Giro. He mentioned something similar, about how monsters were getting stronger, and the newest types—golden enemies—were starting to become less than uncommon. 

“I think that whatever channels there are that funnel dark magic into our world, they’re increasing in either number or output, which explains the rise in monster activity.” Hino hypothesized eagerly. 

‘And—‘ Ahnu began in Hand-Speak before switching over to the spoken dialect of Hylian-Common, very much so wanting to contribute to his interesting musings, “—you think that the moon serves as one of these channels? Or maybe as a means of reflecting that dark energy onto the world as it does sunlight?”

Hino’s eyes widened at their addition, a beyond astonished look enveloping his face. 

“Maybe it concentrates the energy, amplifying its effects over Hyrule?” Ahnu continued, unaware of the astronomer's shock. For the first time in the entirety of their short new-life, Ahnu fully ignored their food to continue on with their abstractions. “But I suppose we’d need to see how the blood moon appears to those in regions outside of Hyrule to confirm that…”

They’d never put much thought into what lied beyond the confines of Hyrule—in fact, they’d never even acknowledged that anything beyond the seemingly small continent existed—and apparently, they wouldn’t get to do so at that very moment, seeing how the beginnings of their newest downward spiral of thought was immediately interrupted by the lunar-fanatic. 

“Oh, BRILLIANT!” he declared with a large smile pulling at his cheeks and wrinkling the corners of his eyes. The volume of his statement spooked Ahnu some, making them almost drop their food but also successfully drawing their attention back to the man. “I’ve never met anyone as intuitive as you, not to mention so inclined to speak about subjects people would rather ignore! Those musings of your's are going right into my notebook!”

Ahnu smiled at him sheepishly, both embarrassed to have received such praise, and happy that they’d offered up something worthwhile for someone’s consideration. 

After finishing up their meal and bidding Hino farewell, they took their cutlery and empty dish over to the spring that looked around the Shrine, cleaning them off before tucking them away, back into the Slate. Then, dragging the tab over to their “Bows and Arrows” page, they withdrew a single fire arrow, and aimed it at the bushels of thorns that grew around the Shrine. 

* * *

“Amazing!” Rensa exclaimed as Ahnu rode over to him on a light brown horse with a dark mane and a speckled hind. “Two hours, flat! That’s literally a quarter of my record!” 

It wasn’t exactly easy, even with the major speed elixir they’d managed to whip up with a couple of crickets, lizards, and some magical essence extracted from moblin guts. They were still struggling atop the steed, trying to balance steering the horse with soothing it, seeing how they’d caught it only minutes before. Surprisingly, they found that their ability to mount and ride the animal came almost effortlessly—but considering that in hindsight, they managed to tame and ride a deer just over a week ago for the sake of completing what turned out to be a Shrine puzzle, it wasn’t THAT strange a turnout. 

“I mean, I won second place in the Hyrule Horse-Taming Competition!” Rensa added, before rubbing at the back of his head somewhat sheepishly. “To be fair, it was just my brother and I competing…”

As Rensa handed over the rupee cash-prize he’d bartered with Ahnu after issuing a horse catching challenge, his twin sons gleefully raced past him in their nightclothes, out of the Stable and over to the horse Ahnu had only just dismounted. 

“Wah! Boys!” Rensa called, startled at their sudden emergence. “What are you doing up? It’s well past sun-down!”

“We wanted to see the horse!” Darton chimed, not even looking over at his father as he held what appeared to be half of an apple up to the horse Ahnu had wrangled, laughing when the animal gently accepted his offering and proceeded to lick his fingers. 

“Yeah!” Shibo agreed, holding a brush that he was already using to tackle what he could reach of the unkempt mane of the formerly wild horse. “She’s such a pretty steed.”

Ahnu looked over at the children, who were just as horse obsessed at their dad, if not more, and clearly taken with the steed. It took them little thought as to what they would say next, managing to speak up before the kids father could attempt to dismiss them. 

“Oh, you can have her then.” they simply proposed. 

“Huh?” Shibo noised.

“Really?!” Darton exclaimed. 

“What?” Rensa asked, his brother and Stable-master snickering behind him. 

“I said that they could have the horse.” Ahnu reiterated, handing off the cut of rope they’d used as a makeshift bridle to one of the twin boys.

“Oh! Thank you, thank you!” Darton cheered, happily snatching up the rope. 

“Yeah!” Shibo added, jumping up and down in excitement. “We promise to take good care of her, Mx.adventurer! C’mon Darton, let’s take her over to the trough!”

“Wha—wait?!” Rensa stammered, twisting around as his children sped past him with their new horse, before turning back to Ahnu. “You—are you sure you don’t want to register that horse as your own?”

“It’s fine” Ahnu replied with a shrug. “I travel a lot of places that horses probably shouldn’t go.”

“Ah, well…alright then.” he replied, less concerned now. “Just wanted to make sure my cute kids weren’t pressuring you into anything. Heh, they’re absolutely wild about horses—you’ve probably made their year.”

“Yeah,” Tasseren added from behind the desk, still chuckling to himself as he continued, “Which is about how long my brother here has been promising to go out and catch them a horse himself!”

“Hey!” Rensa barked, whipping around. “I told you, I’ve got a bad back nowadays!”

“Oh really?” Tasseren asked skeptically, rolling his eyes at Rensa’s excuse, as if he’d heard it a dozen times before. “Last time I checked, my back is perfectly fine, and _I’m_ the older twin.”

“Yeah, by a few minutes!” Rensa retorted. “Besides, it’s not like their uncle ever offered to get them a horse with his ‘superior horse-taming skills!’”

As the twin brothers continued to argue, Ahnu shuffled about awkwardly in place, having since put away the purple rupee Rensa had given them, and pulled out the red one necessary for their rent of a bed. Eventually, Tasseren noticed their dawdling.

“Ah, don’t worry about the rent.” The Stable master told them with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Consider a free night as our thanks for the horse. And please, excuse my incredibly rude brother.”

Ahnu left them to their arguing, making their way to the only unoccupied bed in the Stable. They deposited all armaments save their Moonlight Scimitar, and shed their garb down to their underclothes as soon as they pulled the privacy curtain on the covered bed frame. It wasn’t quite time for the period of silence, when the Stable hands dimmed the lanterns and drew the tied up tarps at the entrance shut while requesting all visitors try to remain quiet—that was usually enforced around 9:00PM at all Stables—so Ahnu had to put up with the relatively loud bickering of not only the the Stables twin managers, but also…what looked to be another set of twin Hylians?

There were quite a few sets of identical siblings here, weren’t there? Weird. 

“I’ve got the scoop on Misko’s treasure, and it’s great!” the more enthusiastic of the two bubbled, loosely waving his arms about in excitement. “Listen up, Dak…”

Misko? As in, the same Misko that wrote the journal entries they’d found back in the Outposts ruins and at Deya village’s remains? 

Fully captivated then, Ahnu peeked through their bed curtain and over at the men, who continued to discuss matters that sounded rather confidential, despite how loudly the two were talking amongst themselves. 

“So listen up, that passing monster-shaman guy from the other night gave me this poem he _swears_ was written by Misko, having ripped it outta of of Misko’s hidden diary’s himself.” the same twin continued. “So I bought it offa’ him, and—“

“Dammit, Prissen!” The other sibling, ‘Dak’ as his brother called him in short, chided, snapping his head around to his brother. “How many times do I have to tell you not to buy random scraps of crap off of complete strangers!”

“A lot! I know, but—“ Prissen retorted, “this is from the same guy you bought that monster mask off of! That’s pretty reputable, ain’t it?”

“Hmm.” the more serious twin hummed, bringing up a hand up to rub at his shortly bearded chin, considering his brother’s assertion. “Alright, give it here.”

“Hah ha! Hells yeah!” Prissen exclaimed, reaching into his pocket for the crumpled up piece of paper. “If anyone can figure this out, it’s you Domidak!”

“Quiet, Prissen. There are other people here that might hear your loud jabbering.” Domidak snatched the parchment out of his brother’s hands. 

“Oh, guess I might wake em’ huh?”

“Or spill the soup on our whole operation, you buffoon. Now give me a moment to read.” Domidak curtly replied, eyes scanning over the words scrawled on the old paper. Speaking a little more quietly, he read, “The little twin steps over the little river. My cave rests above that river’s source…hmm. Now what could that mean?”

Leaning in to hear if they could catch him saying anything else, Ahnu accidentally knocked their sheathed saber off of the edge of the bed where it was sitting precariously as is, wincing as they smacked their hand against it and the side of the bed frame in order to stop it from clattering against the ground. Unfortunately, the dull thud that came as a result of their reflex was loud enough to alert the twins, who both turned to see Ahnu half sticking out from under their bed’s curtain. 

“Hey, buddy!” Domidak called out to them as a volume that was pretty unnecessary, considering that even on the bed farthest away from the men, Ahnu was only a dozen or so meters away. His cold glare caught their own panicked one before they could even think to retreat back into the little solace their covered space would bring them. “What’s your problem? You aren’t being incredibly rude and listening to our conversation, are you?”

Ahnu was in fact doing just that, and they flustered in extreme embarrassment under the duress of the accusation. They gesticulated erratically, trying to apologize in Hand-Speak when their voice refused to fill the gaps—only for their attempts to be cut off.

“Yeah, you rat! We’re treasure hunters, on the trail of our latest score!” Prissen piggybacked off of his brother’s ire, more comical than intimidating in his own over-expressed scowl. “The treasure of the great bandit Misko is as good as ours!”

“Prissen!” Snarled Domidak, redirecting his anger from Ahnu to his brother, who seemed to be a far easier target to take his verbal offense. “You’re going to give it all away!”

“Ack! Sorry Dak…” Prissen meekly replied, running a hand over his tied up hair. “I got carried away again.”

“Tch.” Domidak tsked his brother, before turning back to face Ahnu. “Anyway, were busy here, dude. If you need something, take it up with someone else.” He motioned for his brother to follow him, “C’mon, Prissen. Let’s go talk somewhere where ride little rats can’t listen in on us”

“Yeah! Let’s go!” Prissen agreed, matching his brothers stride, only stopping near Ahnu’s bed to point a finger at them, adding “And don’t follow us, either, or else. It’s not like you could figure out the riddle anyways.”

Ahnu frowned at that. 

“Prissen. Shut. Up.” His brother growled out, grabbing his more manic twin by the collar and physically dragging him out of the Stable. 

After the two of them had left, Ahnu flopped back down onto their bed with a “humph.” They didn’t appreciate the insult to their intelligence, or the lame threat. Or being called a rat. Twice. 

They thought about the clue the more serious twin had read aloud: “The little twin steps over the little river. My cave rests above that river’s source.”

If there was anything they knew about Misko, it was that the soldier-bandit had a penchant for forming riddles based around geographical nonsense—even if all they had to go off of was their finding a single treasure of theirs before they even knew anything about the thief. Ahnu pulled out their Slate, and began to examine the surrounding area on their map. 

They were good at puzzles, if the litany of Shrines they’d completed were anything to go by.

* * *

They set off the next morning towards what they believed to be the location of this “treasure” the rude twins had talked about, finding the riddle they supplied to be rather simple to solve, provided that you had a decently accurate map that labeled most locations and landmarks. The “little twin” was just the name of a nearby bridge, and the “little river” was a small stream that ran under it, feeding into the larger Squabble river. 

It took a full eight hours of hiking, fighting off a litany of various types of monsters, and getting side tracked by a bunch of mushrooms and game they spotted along the way—when suddenly, their Slate began to vibrate and beep. 

Their Shrine sensor led them further down along the little river’s shore, firing them to turn back after they strayed a couple meters past the lateral direction of the Shrine’s evident location. Seeing nothing particularly obvious in the relative area, they began to scan the face of the mountain that bordered the other side of the stream, expecting this to be a situation similar to that they encountered back when they discovered the Shrines that rested on the smaller of the twin peaks, where in the ancient structures were situated above them. They didn’t have to look for very long, or even very high, before they spotted what looked to be a loose and out-of-place mound of rocks and boulders that looked to be the result of some sort of landslide. 

A single rune bomb later, and they’d located the source of their sensor’s distress. 

* * *

After their only mildly infuriating completion of the Shrine’s motion control puzzle, wherein they had to operate a series of adjustable pedestals to direct the orientation of a couple physical sections of the path they walked, they exited the cave with yet another spirit orb and Shield of the Mind’s Eye, into the cool night air. 

Continuing down the stream shore, they could see the waterfall that must have been the “river’s source.”

They also happened to see a bear, which they made the unfortunate mistake of chasing through the woods, away from their destination, and into a clearing where a pile of bones and weaponry awaited them. 

And in accordance with the running pattern of bizarre that was their life, the bones promptly assembled into what appeared to be a skeletal Hinox, a menagerie of melee weapons sticking out of its shoulders and vertebrae. 

_“Close, dearling.” Came the hearty voice in the language of the Gerudo, followed by a fond chuckle. “A Stalnox.”_

It had been a while since they’d heard the most active voice in their head speak up. Even as the large skeletal monster lumbered over to Ahnu, who clutched their scimitar—a _Gerudo_ weapon—tightly, they couldn’t help but linger on the absent revelation that came with her lumination. 

For her voice—or any of their hallucinations—to have been the echo of a memory, Ahnu would have to have once gone through an experience similar to those that prompt their recollections. 

That thought made their head hurt more than the auditory imposition, though, not as much as being swatted aside by the Stalnox that took advantage of their distracted state did. 

Thoroughly irritated then, Ahnu picked themself up off of the ground where they landed, having managed to tuck, roll, and skid to a stop in the tall grasses of the forest clearing, a few meters away. 

_“Careless.” Elle chided, tapping the back of their skull with her middle and forefinger. “Always remain vigilant.”_

“Right! Okay, I get it!” Ahnu barked back in Sheikah, a LOT more aggravated now. They were literally yelling at the wind, knowing that the voice wasn’t from someone corporeal who could respond, and the ridiculous nature of their dilemma incensed them all the more. They didn’t need the Assailant chastising them. 

They sprinted at the Stalnox, which had since occupied itself with tearing out one of it’s many ribs, tossing it at the Hylian who swiftly dodged. Ahnu swung their saber at one of the monster’s knee’s, intent on taking out it’s legs and crippling it, but that was a task easier said than done. Even as frail as it was without flesh, the skeletal cyclops’ bones were sturdier than the trunk of any tree of the same width. 

Ahnu managed to successfully shatter it’s patella after a quick dozen strikes—along with their Moonlight Scimitar. 

_"That's..." her voice came again, more somber than strict, as she was half the time. Sincere. "A shame."_

After holding onto it for two months, it truly _was_ a shame to see it go, but Ahnu wasn’t going to let another unfortunate distraction draw their attention away from a potentially lethal situation. With little thought otherwise, they jammed the ragged remnants of their blade, all the way up to the guard of the hilt, into one of the deep slashes in the Stalnox’s knee cap where it stuck out like a chisel, before rolling away as the large monster slammed itself downward in an attempt to crush them. 

Ahnu continued the edge backwards, most of their attention directed on the oafish undead as it ambled back up to its feet, even as they quickly withdrew their sledgehammer from their Slate. They dived in for the same leg they had assaulted prior, commencing a roundabout swing of the weapon, aiming directly for the golden hilt. 

Their efforts earned them a sickening _crack_ , and the ground shaking **thud** of the Stalnox falling to the earth on its side—though if the lumbering monster felt it, or even just pain in general, it didn’t show. Instead of dissipating, the skeletal Hinox began to drag itself towards Ahnu with it’s hands, which proved to be a _beyond_ distressing sight. 

Ahnu ended up clambering to the top of a nearby, over sized boulder-like protrusion in the ground, where the Stalnox had trouble trying to follow on account of its missing leg. They attempted to size up the situation from their vantage, fruitlessly trying to gauge just how much more of a beating they’d have to inflict upon the thing as it scratched at the face of the mound, aiming to pull itself up to the Hylian. 

_‘Why won’t it die?’_ Ahnu thought incredulously. 

_“Fight it like you would a Hinox.” Elle curtly offered._

They weren’t really expecting an answer, but fine. 

“I’ve never **fought** a Hinox.” Ahnu growled in response, knowing that they were only talking to themself. 

_“You had the right approach, going for it’s legs. When a warrior is quick enough, they’re the most efficient points to deal damage to en mass.” Elle replied. “But the eye is it’s primary weak point. It only has one, after all, and it’s a relatively large target.”_

Now that...was actually a useful bit of information—and it only served to legitimately frustrate Ahnu more. The Assailant had an aggravating habit of being staggeringly inconsistent in her delivery of instructions. She was just as often strict in her stern and unsubstantial reprimand as she was nurturing in her edification, and the juxtaposition of the polar personalities she presented made their head spin. Not to mention that the opportune and relevant nature of the responses dredged up yet another unfortunately timed revelation—or at least, a conjecture. 

Could...could they prompt responses…volitionally? Even if only somewhat so? 

Ahnu shook that thought out of their throbbing head, instead focusing back down on the monster below. 

Considering how unbothered the skeletal thing was by having it’s leg broken, Ahnu preemptively abandoned the idea of inflicting any form of distractive pain on it, along with the notion that they could possibly deprive it of the only sense it was using to track them. To be honest, they weren’t entirely sure if the Assailant— _Elle_ —was talking about Hinox’s or Stalnox’s specifically, but at that point, they were willing to try anything. 

Grabbing their knight’s bow off of their back, they aim right for the center of the Stalnox’s head, letting the arrow fly just as recognition flared in the malicious looking orb of dark magic that granted the monster sight. Evidently, the slightest of impact was all that was required to knock the eyeball out of its socket, rolling and bouncing around unnaturally as the body it was once attached to immediately began to flail in its absence. 

Ahnu slid down from their place above the monster, chasing down its eye, hammer in hand. Just as the orb managed to twist around, staring up at Ahnu with a stilted pupil that narrowed at the sight of it’s attacker, they brought their weapon down upon it before it’s body could react from the distance behind that it still dawdled. A plume of purple smoke burst forth, intermingling with the fragments of dull metal that used to be the blunt of their iron sledgehammer. 

Turning to face the remnants of the Stalnox, Ahnu began to gingerly pick through the lot of the teeth it left behind to get at the weapons that were once embedded in it. The knight’s halberd and giant boomerang were welcome additions to their medley of melee objects, but not nearly as much as the likes of a sword the Slate dubbed a “Thunderblade.” They’d known that arrows could be infused with elemental prowess, but to be presented with the fact that the same could be done for blades proved to be an incredibly pleasing bit of information. Ahnu didn’t much care for the wands of Wizzrobes, but as they swung around the neon yellow-green and rune inscribed sword, marveling at the ragged trails of sparks left in its wake, they could certainly appreciate the utility therein of the electric blade. 

Electing to _not_ allow their expedition to be derailed any further, Ahnu made their way back through the Hickaly Woods, back to the stream fed by the small waterfall that flowed from the mountain. 

* * *

Ahnu inspected the engravings of their newly acquired Flameblade, which proved to be their favorite finding amongst the treasures Misko had left behind in the cave. Whatever source those twins had gotten their information from proved to be spot on, as they’d found the incredible sword alongside an assortment of precious uncut gems, which were less interesting on account of the Ahnu having already collected more than one of every type available in the hidden alcove. 

They set up camp in the cave, considering that it was the safest location they could find out in the wild, and that it was already past midnight. There was no way they were making it back to the Stable without teleporting to the nearby Shrine, and considering how much of a chore that would have been, what with how the day’s events had exhausted them fully, they were a tad worried about the ramifications of enacting the enervating-as-is ordeal. For them to pull such a taxing stunt would more likely come from a place of desperation—as a sort of last resort. 

Fortunately, they had enough leeway to afford their loitering in the cave, with no relevant matters so urgent as to drive them out for the night. 

Setting up a fire, gleefully using their newest weapon to set alight a bundle of wood, Ahnu went about roasting up an armful of the silent shrooms they’d found growing all around the waterfall, rubbed with salt and herb, while considering what to do next. At least in the immediate, they were certain that they wanted to return to the Dueling Peaks Stable, if only to alert the rude twins to the reality that was their discovery of Misko’s cave. Ahnu would have been lying if they attempted to admit no guilt on their part for hijacking the brother’s expedition, even if the two of them _were_ mean to Ahnu. They themself were eavesdropping after all—Domidak did get that right. 

Maybe they'd give the two men all of the gems, and keep only the flameblade to themself, as a sort of finders fee. 

* * *

“Beat it kid, we don’t want your pity pocket change!” Prissen griped. “Misko’s treasure would be more than just a paltry couple of jewels!”

“Prissen, behave.” Domidak chided his brother, albeit a lot gentler than his usual. “Don’t be so rude, they’re just trying to apologize.”

“Er—right...” the erratic twin responded, looking back to Ahnu somewhat sheepishly. “Sorry, about that…”

“Hm. But my brother’s right, for once.” Domidak added, which earned a beaming smile from his sibling. “Misko’s said to have stolen countless treasures back in the day. If you really did find the hideout, I don’t think you could carry a bag big enough to fit all of it.”

‘But wouldn’t a decent bandit know not to hide all of their stolen goods in one place?’ Ahnu signed in response, frankly exasperated by the insistence of the two at this point. Neither of the brothers could accept that they’d found Misko’s cave, and refused to accept the gems they’d acquired there as a consolation. ‘I think that they would split up the collective treasure, and hide it all in different places. This is just a small portion of it.’

“That’s some creative musing on your part, but I don’t think so” Domidak condescended.

“Yeah, we don’t think so!” Prissen chimed in. 

“Prissen.” the more serious of the two harshly stated, not having to specify any particular grievance or even look at his brother. 

“Sorry.”

Giving up, Ahnu walked away from the men without even bowing, let alone bidding them farewell, and over to the interior check-in desk where they promptly rented a bed for the night. Dealing with the pair of mean-spirited siblings for only a few minutes apparently warranted a full night’s rest, even if all they’d done was hike back to the Stable for the duration of the day’s light. 

* * *

Ahnu stood, leaning against some sealed supply crates stored behind the Dueling peaks Stable, watching as Shibo and Darton took turns riding the horse they’d given the boys—who they’d named “Efaun”—while their father carefully led the steed around the Stable’s White Goat pen by the proper bridle he’d fitted onto her. Ahnu smiled and waved to the children every time the little parade passed by where they rested, passively tinkering with the settings of their Slate in the cloudy afternoon. 

After visiting Kakariko, Ahnu realized that their map had automatically updated to include a specialized icon and title for the settlement. Whether it was due to them activating the nearby Shrine, or the Slate recognizing it as a location that was once recorded in the map before it was damaged and left in the Shrine of Resurrection with Ahnu, they couldn’t be for sure—though they had a strong suspicion that it was the latter. Intrigued by the development, they were now figuring out how to alter the map altogether.

With as far as the map could zoom in to focus on a specific area, Ahnu could see features that certainly wouldn’t have been present 100 years ago, when the Slate was last operative—like the vague outlines of the modern Stables or the clear representation of countless destroyed settlements, where the buildings were specks of disorderly wreckage instead of the neatly lined up blobs they were in Kakariko. It was obvious that the physical portions of the map had updated autonomously, even if the countless labels and designations hadn’t. Considering that Ahnu needed to manually enable bits and pieces of their still incomplete map at Sheikah Towers, they assumed that those structures likely had something to do with it. Perhaps they served as survey beacons, using some sort of widespread interpretive sonar to image the lateral and vertical aspects of the land and it’s ever changing state, as well as some form of sensitive meteorological technology to inform the Slate of any given region’s current weather. 

When it came to revisions, they started with just the Stables they’d encountered so far, as they had formed a habit of putting down one of the cute cooking pot stamps at each one they’d stumbled upon as early as their first visit to the Outskirts. They eventually discovered a type of more permanent icon they could place alongside a fillable text box that bore a striking resemblance to the style of the one over Kakariko, only it happened to display a horse instead of a house, which Ahnu found to be perfect. Cross referencing their map with a far more simplified version the current Stable they were residing at supplied, they were able to accurately locate and edit all portions of the map to include the common titles of the rest stops. 

Then, they moved on to editing pre-existing locations. This effort on their part mostly culminated in Ahnu adding the the word “Ruins” to the name of any settlement they’d visited thus far that—for all intents and purposes—no longer existed. 

Outpost—Ruins.

East Post—Ruins.

Deya Village—Ruins.

Gongoa Village—Ruins. 

They weren’t sure just how many edits they’d have to make to the map in the future, and they weren’t particularly eager to find out. 

Looking up from the screen, Ahnu waved again to the children as they passed, their smile a little dampered by the tail-end of the editing task they’d just completed. They absently tied the Slate back to their hip, watching as the family took yet another lap around the goat pen. Their soft smile dropped fully as the entourage made its way across the far side of the fencing’s perimeter. 

Just on top of the hill overlooking the back of the Stable was the dismembered head of a Guardian, partially sunken into a grassy ground that’s long since grown around and over it, proving just how hard it was to ignore the remnants of whatever chaos that had occurred in the backyard of the Dueling Peaks, nearly 100 years ago. 

So concentrated on staring down the head of the beyond damaged automaton—as if it would come to life and twist a concealed body out of the earth the moment they looked away—Ahnu hadn’t even realized that the cloud cover that hung over the Dueling region had finally burst, lightly showering the Stable, until the twin children began to scream and laugh at the predicament. 

“Alright, alright. Enough training for today.” Rensa stated, lifting Shibo off of Efaun and handing the reins to Darton. “Go put her away with the others for the night.” 

As his kids did as he’d instructed, Rensa hopped the railing of the pen and began corralling the goats into a covered shed, to keep them dry and out of the steadily increasing downpour. He hopped back over near the crates Ahnu rested against, noticing the far off look in their narrowed eyes and the general scrunching of their facial features that produced an expression that just barely fell short of a scowl. He followed their line of sight to the peak of the hill, quickly understanding. 

Most new travelers to the Dueling Peaks region tend to dislike it for this reason specifically. 

“Ah. Don’t worry about those.” he assured them.

Ahnu was a bit caught off guard by him speaking up so suddenly, but they quickly recovered and turned to listen to him, expression softening and their head tilting to the side. 

“All the ones near the Stable are dead—er, deactivated. Something like that.” Rensa continued, still looking in the direction of the hill with hands on his hips, where beyond it, lay a whole mess more of the formerly deadly things. “And I mean actually deactivated, not just deceptively so. Last time we checked, there were only two semi-active ones stationed at the middle of the field by the Northmost pond and to the far East corner of the Ash Swamp, on the left wing of Fort Hateno. They can’t move—thank the goddesses—and some traveler tied some cloth over their eyes a long time ago, so neither can see distant passerbys.”

Ahnu was pretty skeptical of that, but not because they thought he was knowingly lying to them. They just found it hard to believe that in the entirety of the field filled to the brim with the decaying husks of Guardians, there were only two that wern't entirely out of commission. Speaking of the field…

“I thought this place was called the Blatchery Plains?” Ahnu replied questioningly. After all, that’s what it said in the Slate. 

“Oh, it was.” Rensa responded, turning his head to them for a moment. “And it still is, sort of. But ever since what happened here nearly a century ago, it earned the title ‘Ash Swamp’ for how it looked after Guardians ran the place over and destroyed everything here”

Oh. 

“It isn’t so bad now, though.” Rensa assured again, catching how Ahnu’s face had shifted once again to a gloomier look. He looked over to the Stable’s horse boarding area. “My grandpa says the fields were stripped barren, and the few outpost buildings that were here—even the old Stable that had to be fully reconstructed into this here settlement—were blasted at and torn to rubble.” His own eyes narrowed a bit at the recollection, filling with something not quite resembling sadness—a sort of unease or slight tenderness maybe? He turned back to Ahnu. “That’s why it’s called the Ash Swamp. But for as rough as these fields had it back then, they’re considered blessed by most nowadays, and it’s said that a guardian spirit watches over those who pass through. The plain is lush, the pond water clear, and plenty of the wildlife has returned, like the horses.”

Ahnu nodded along in agreement. Had there not been countless Guardian husks littering the area like vile tombstones, anyone could have fooled them into thinking very little had happened here. 

“Really, it’s the Bokoblins you should worry about.” He added with a chuckle. “Unfortunately, ever since the fields have gotten vibrant again, a ton of those damned pigs have gone and made themselves comfy all throughout the plains. They chase around travelers like there’s no tomorrow.”

Ahnu smiled at the comment, and proceeded to bid the man farewell with a bow, heading back around to the front of the Stable. Once they were inside and out of the rain, which was repelled excellently by their new stealth gear that remained incredibly comfortable despite the downpour, they sat down at the interior lounging table, and took out their Slate. 

Blatchery Plain—Ash Swamp. 

* * *

Ahnu looked down from atop the highest point of the taller Twin peak, out towards the west horizon. After spending a day just loitering about the Dueling Peaks Stable, they had figured it was time to move on, even if they still had no lead as to what they would do following their departure—which is why they elected to scope out their next heading from the highest point they could readily reach. 

Teleporting was...not as unpleasant as they had expected it to be. It had been just over a month since they had last seen fit to utilize that feature of the Slate, so they’d certainly been dreading it some. Ahnu initially chalked it up to them having become more accustomed to and expecting of the sensations of fast-travel, and while they still believed that was part of it, given time to think up on the isolated summit, they remembered their prayers to the Goddess Statue back in Kakariko. They exchanged numerous spirit orbs for the “amplification of their being” and while the surplus of energy was certainly noticeable back then, they were only now starting to realize just how great and deeply the enhancement of their body went. 

They just had more energy to spare now.

As they eyed the features of the land, a freezing wind picked up on the frosted peak, chilling Ahnu to the bone. Even with an excess of stamina, it seemed that there was no amount of vitality that could shield them from the cold. 

Not particularly eager to go back to wearing the doublet, especially with how much more comfortable and useful the Sheikah stealth gear was, Ahnu whipped their flameblade out of the Slate before resuming their inspection of the land, the enchanted metal emanating a comfortable amount of heat against their back and into the open air. As they made to reactivate the scope of their Slate, their eyes lingered just below the frame of their screen, on something they didn’t need the magnified view to see. 

It was the incredible bridge they’d seen back at Deya, when they’d climbed the basin opposite to the end they’d entered the waterlogged ruins from. They’d idly thought about traveling to it back then, hadn’t they?

Mind made up—simple as that—Ahnu jumped off of the mountain. 

* * *

It had taken a couple days travel, seasoned with intermittent foraging, hunting, and monster-slaying—during which the stealth properties of their new gear that they absolutely _loved_ now really came to shine—but Ahnu had finally made it to the base of the Northern stone-brick arch of the great bridge, just as the sun was setting. They gazed through it’s incredible opening, down the 5 kilometer bridge, and to the other side where the South arch rested—and nearby, an inactivated Sheikah Tower. 

Inspecting both pillars of the arch, Ahnu quickly found that the entrances to either side had been partially destroyed, and had caved in as a result. Upon climbing it, they managed to locate a few points of entry higher up, but the interior of the massive constructions were nothing particularly astounding, having evidently been stripped bare of any useful supplies. There was so much debris littering the place and blocking entire passages—like a stairwell Ahnu couldn’t hope to access without removing the lot of a partially caved in roof—that they elected to ascend the rest of it from the outside. 

It wasn’t so structurally unsound that Ahnu felt unsafe camping inside the arch, but they much preferred to sleep out and under the stars that night, especially with what was to come. If what the lunar researcher, Hino, had said to them back before they left the Dueling Peaks Stable were accurate, then they’d be in for quite a spectacle that night—and one that wouldn’t terrify them so much now that they expected it. 

They lit a suspiciously well-kept torch post atop the more dilapidated of the arch towers with their flameblade, having spotted that a similar post on the opposite pillar was already lit, prompting a Korok to burst forth and gift them a seed. They’d only been solving the forest children’s minor puzzles for fun up until recently, but now that they knew of someone who would gladly trade an incredibly useful service in exchange for the strange golden seeds, they were going to redouble their efforts in collecting them—though, they would have to find out where this "Korok Forest" was first.

As they roasted some bass over the torch, sharing a fresh mushroom with the Korok, they became increasingly aware of the red tint the sky had taken on as the night progressed. Ahnu looked over to the East, where the color was condensed brightly, as the rest of the world went dark—at least in comparison. When they looked down over the edge of the arch and to the land instead of up at the sky, they were very unfortunately made aware of how the expanse of earth was littered with its own endless assembly of 'stars'. Those awful magenta specks that drifted up from the distant ground, but thankfully seemed to dissipate before they could reach Ahnu and company. Not much of a consolation in the face of the malicious and unknown, but it was certainly something. They looked back over to the horizon as waves of red crested the mountain line.

“Huh.” the little seedling squeaked, sitting on the parapet while shoving bits and pieces of mushrooms under their mask, watching the blood moon with Ahnu. “Don’t like that.”

Ahnu could only nod. It was certainly an interesting sight, now that they were observing the cycle from start to finish, but it was a dark and uncanny feature of the world they’d woken up to. One that they wouldn’t miss were they never to see it again.

Though, as lucky as they were consistently demonstrated to be, Ahnu knew they weren’t _that_ lucky. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu needed a little--scratch that, a LOT-- of weird to distract from all the heavy.
> 
> Okay, so NOW I'm all out of pre-written chapters. I don't exactly have an update schedule, but I write and draw fast enough to post sub-weekly. Check out my Tumblr to stay up to date! Thanks for reading, and I'll see ya'll soon. Off to Faron!


	15. Chapter 15--  To Faron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a quick examination of the Bridge of Hylia, Ahnu makes their way into the beginnings of the Faron region, where even stranger ruins of prehistoric architecture, made by a tribe of people long since disappeared, await them.

Ahnu had cleared the entire bridge of its meager population of monsters, and made it to the South arch by the time they’d discovered that the abutments below either, as well as all the support piers along the full 5 kilometer length of the grand superstructure, each had a trapdoor hidden under a large stone panel that spanned about one-by-one meter. They were disappointed to find that each only held a particularly narrow staircase, with an occasional thin, but tall and several meters deep slit that served as a window to the outside—likely for the purpose of venting air. Though, when they gave it some thought, they recognized the architectural annoyance as a necessary compromise considering the sheer enormity of the bridge. Where the interior and even the altogether existence of the arches were unnecessary as opposed to auxiliary—if not decorative—in regards to the structural integrity of the ancient construction. The numerous support columns served an actual purpose, as opposed to the grandiose gateways on either side of the stone pathway. 

That didn’t stop Ahnu from attempting to inspect each stairwell from the South end to the North—until they’d made their way down through the fourth sequential pier, nearly falling from the steps that abruptly cut off into the open air as they turned the narrow corner of its spiral. 

Right. They’d completely forgotten about the whole “dilapidated and in disrepair” thing that amounted to four piers being totally destroyed. As they looked down from the the edge of what was left of the stairs there were for them to stand on, they could see what little remnants there were of the base of the pillar, so low that the surface of the lake overtook it on some particularly decimated portions, before the rest of it’s foundation stretched off below and into the murky blue-green depths. 

The damage looked...odd? They couldn’t exactly place what it was about the destruction that seemed off, other than how smoothed the broken sections of the stone construction were, so there wasn’t much else to say about it. 

They kicked a loose brick off the half-step where they stood, which was the only thing keeping them from plummeting. Ahnu guessed that they were suspended maybe less than a half a kilometer above the water at the moment, considering that the top of the bridge seemed to be just over that height. 

“Probably shouldn’t stand too close to the edge...” Ahnu muttered to themself, gearing to head back up to the flat of the bridge—just as the steps they’d so precariously perched themself on gave way under the combination of gravity and Ahnu’s added weight. 

Ahnu yelped, but quickly manifested their paraglider, and proceeded to float down to the decimated bit of foundation they were only just eyeing while only mildly frustrated. 

_‘Hells.’_ they thought, as they landed upon the worn-down rubble that served as the ragged surface of the old pier’s interior. The stairs ended just where Ahnu had previously guessed the water’s surface to be, so there wasn’t anything else below the weathered debris to have been drowned by water. It was solid stone brick, all the way down to the lakebed—or at least, that’s what Ahnu assumed. 

They DID find a Korok, and their Slate’s sensor seemed to have finally located a nearby Shrine at their lower elevation, so at least their fall wasn’t as big a waste of (un-devoted) time as they’d initially thought it to be. Their discovery of the seedling motivated them to inspect the rest of the bridge from below before pursuing the proximate Shrine, immediately validating and rewarding the out efforts with a “Phrenic Bow” they found stored away in a chest that sat proudly and unconcealed atop the base of the very next destroyed pier. Whoever left it there must have reasonably presumed hiding it any further to be superfluous, considering the location. 

They did a once over of the weapon, Initially thinking it to have been some sort of polished dark wood work in the dim moonlight of the night until they actually held it. It felt different from wood, and the weight was off—somehow too heavy and symmetrically balanced in its uniform construction to have been made from any tree, but not hefty enough to have been metal. It was familiar, in make and feel, but in a way that they couldn’t quite place—until they began to practice drawing its cord, relishing in the accuracy and range they could just  _ tell  _ the lovely thing possessed. 

They had just shot an arrow into a particularly large fish that meandered around the base of the column, about 200 meters below, when it hit them. 

It was made of the same nonmetal that the guard plates on their Sheikah gear were made of. The same material that the chassis of their Slate, the Shrines, and the Towers were made of. Or at least, it was some variance of the material, perhaps of slightly different composition, considering the matte texture of it. It was like a simplistic version of whatever the few bits of low-end ancient weaponry Ahnu had wielded and promptly broke in the not-so-distant past. The Slate itself confirmed the bow to have been of Sheikah make after all...

Their fingertips traced the striations of its hold—wrapped in something not-quite-silk, thicker yet soft all the same, like the fabric of their stealth gear. They made the poor choice of loosening it to see what was beneath, only to find patterned bronze that was treated to appear gold, inlaid with blue porcelain. It possessed such a simple and elegant design, but vastly juxtaposed that of the rest of the bow, what with the only real embellishments being the red stain designs that resembled a simplified version of the Sheikah eye, which started at either bolt of the weapon and stretched down along the limb, which both had a spare nock cord wrapped and tied around itself. As they examined the active cord of the bow, made of that unique not-silk stuff, they realized that the bow did in-fact possess wood—just not as a supplement to its structure. 

Where the nock met either end of the bow, they found the limb tips to be clasped in polished carvings—wood shaped to resemble diamonds. Ahnu couldn’t help but think of what a strange medley of design elements the thing was composed of, as they thumbed the ornamentation. 

“Odd...” they mused aloud, so immersed in their contemplation that they failed to register having even whispered to themself, let alone what language they’d murmured in. 

_ “Ah, that old bow...” came his gentle voice, following a soft hum. His hand and arm, covered in a uniquely tailored version of the Sheikah stealth gear—augmented to compress the wrist and cover his three middlemost fingers, with the index and middle conjoined—reached into view to brush the same wooden clasp, where some something was carved. The script was probably Sheikah, but it was so well worn that it was practically illegible.  _

_ “But it isn’t that strong.” She countered with a chuckle, dragging her fingers up their back in a soothing motion. “Is he why you insist on using that bow, dearling?” _

Ahnu wasn’t sure if the voices were actually interacting—that is to say, that they belonged to some memory that was one-in-the-same as opposed to two completely different instances that were dredged up from the depths of their barren mind simultaneously, both in response to relevant stimuli. Considering that they spoke entirely different languages, they had to guess that the answer was no. 

What they did know for sure, was that there was no carving in the wood when they looked again, and that the double-tap of recall gave them an abrupt and fierce headache. 

Shaking their head as if to fling the voices out, really only exacerbating the oncoming migraine with the motion that steepened the waves of dull but relentless pain washing over them, Ahnu grumbled to themself as they deposited the bow back into the Slate. 

They set up an ice pillar on the surface of the water below with the Cryonis application, and jumped off of the ruined column. They collected the fish they’d shot from above, and continued on their way along the bottom of the bridge. 

By the time they’d reached the center of the bridge, Ahnu had become so accustomed to the use of of Cryonis that they could manifest an unending trail of frozen platforms aligned so closely and consistently that they didn’t even have to break their stride when traversing Hundreds upon hundreds of meters across the water. They rather enjoyed swimming, but this was just easier when it came down to efficiently treading the enormous lake. 

It came to their mild surprise to find that what they’d previously surmised to be the colossal supporting pier that held up the bridge’s fountain plaza above was actually just two slightly larger pillars built close together. 

Ahnu ice-walked through the narrow space between them, only to be more surprised at finding a menagerie of graffiti carved into either inner-facing of the bridge’s center columns. 

They ended up stripping down and diving into the water to get a better look at it all, only to be disappointed when they realized it was all in a language that they couldn’t read. The script was too blocky and simplistic to be anything they knew, seeing how wavy the written form of the Gerudo language was, or complex Sheikah and Hylian characters were. 

It reminded them of the single unknown word on their paraglider-bracelet—the one composed of two letters they didn’t know, that followed the statement “for our flower.”

Slipping off their bangle, Ahnu swam back and forth, examining the old and algae covered stone, even diving under the water where the countless inscriptions seemed to condense, all in an attempt to find characters that resembled a single vertical line or three horizontal lines with only one vertical line connecting the upmost two. The scripture on the facings certainly looked similar, but there was just too much of it—all of which being heavily eroded—that Ahnu was having a hard time picking out singular letters. 

What they found instead when diving, were a couple of metal treasure chests, which immediately pulled their attention away from the graffiti. Using Magnesis to pull the chests up and out of the water, Ahnu was incredibly pleased to have found a bundle of shock arrows, a soldier’s broadsword, and one more particularly curious weapon that they laid across their crossed legs as they sat atop an ice pillar. 

It was a gorgeous ebony longsword, heavy and sharp. It’s handle was like that of their recently acquired phrenic bow, what with it being detailed in bronze and a dusty blue ceramic that coated the un-raised portions of the treated metal—though admittedly, the pattern was different. The eye of truth that was so brazenly displayed on the equivalent of the blade’s rain guard made it clear that it too was of Sheikah make, with the biggest difference being that it actually seemed to be made of metal. 

_ “Hah ha! That’s my Edge of Duality, dearest. A bit too heavy for you.” she laughed deeply, her equally bronze hand—natural and dark like the untreated equivalent of the metal—brushed over the length of the blade’s flat, gold and wood bangles clinking against it. Where her hand rested, it cut off one of the two vertical words carved into the metal, the only visible characters of the mostly uncovered one spelling 'RIJ.' It’s surface was scratched and the blue silk-wrapped hilt looked well-worn, indicating heavy use, but the edges themselves were in pristine condition. Recently sharpened.  _

_ “My favorite weapon!” _

Ahnu closed their eyes at the imposition, irritated to find that the sight wouldn’t abade so easily. It was a hallucination, after all. 

When it did fizzle away into nothingness, a slight ringing was the only impression Ahnu was left with in the wake of the memory’s rejection. They immediately stood up, hauling the weapon along with them to defiantly confirm that they  _ could  _ in fact hold it, albeit they could only do so efficiently in a two-handed grip. Looking back down to the sword in their hands, they inspected it further, finding that the edge of this particular weapon to be chipped in several places, and that the handle was just as barren as they’d first gleamed it to be. Also well-used, but not particularly well cared for. 

Well, what should they have expected? They did find it in the shallows of a lake, after all. 

Putting the blade into the Slate, along with their stealth garb for the time being, Ahnu carried on with their exploration of the bridge from below. They’d managed to find another bundle of shock arrows and two more Koroks by the time the sun had begun to rise, and they began to consider just setting up camp in the remains of the totally destroyed pier, only marginally concerned about the possibility of some wreckage falling from the bridge above and potentially crushing them. They eyed the still-distant shoreline briefly, and then the bottom of the bridge overhead, before making up their mind. 

Not willing to risk injury over a deliberate oversight so lame, they settled for heading to the next closest pier, which had an impressive sized chunk taken out of the base that touched the water, and heading back up it’s stairwell. It was only after they’d started a fire near the fountain, lounging in an abandoned broken-down caravan while munching idly on a hearty radish and waiting for their fish to finish cooking, did they finally realize what about the damage to the bridge’s pillars seemed so off. 

They swiveled their head from side to side so as to better view the great arches, where the damage was rough, the pieces of building likely blasted into smithereens were ragged, and the bricks strewn all about their bases were overgrown by flora but relatively un-abraded. New. At least, newer than every other malady that’s befallen the ancient construction. Existing topside, maintenance for them and the road in general were likely, well, actually possible back before tragedy struck the land, as evidenced by the passable state and differing make the bricks lain along the path around them. They weren’t the same as those that made up the finer portions of the numerous columns interiors, which probably never needed to be replaced on account of never seeing enough use to justify any sort of renovation. 

This all led Ahnu to suspect that all afflictions above came with the Calamity. 

Down below, however, was a different story altogether. Every bit of the bridge was weathered and every structural injury was burnished by the erosions of time and humidity. Whatever happened to it down below must have predated the Calamity several times over.

The damage done to the piers were old wounds on an ancient bridge. 

_ ‘Neat.’ _ Ahnu thought in a detached sort of manner while chowing down on their cooked fish. 

* * *

“Goodness! I certainly wouldn’t have expected to find a Hylian all the way out here, in the middle of Lake Hylia” Mei exclaimed brightly. “And one that could fly, no less!”

“Hm.” Ahnu noised awkwardly, stiff from the islet where they stood as she padded over towards them in the water. They, in turn, absolutely hadn’t expected to find a Zora here, or literally anywhere outside whatever kingdom and extended territory in the wetlands that was their own. They were under the impression that it was rare for the tribe of water people to stray far from their home nowadays.

“Today’s weather is unfortunate, isn’t it?” she commented on the rain that fell around the two, and over the lake. 

‘Yes.’ Ahnu agreed, albeit distractedly. It was that very bout of downpour that had so rudely awakened them from the remains of a covered wagon they’d slept in. The storm must have been ushered in by a strong change in the direction of the wind while they slept, considering that they’d sensed no signs of the impending shower before dozing. Since they’d slept long enough that it was nearly another morning before they’d awoken, they weren’t all too upset, and fairly enjoyed the rain now that the clothes that clung to their wet body weren’t unbearably uncomfortable. Still, they would have to remember to pitch their canvas cover over themself when they slept outside in the open.

“Well, at least the rain stirs the lake life into activity. Makes my job easier!“ she happily added, relatively enthused to have someone to conversate with. Considering the isolation, it wouldn’t have been that much of a surprise to anyone but Ahnu. 

‘Your job?’ they signed with a tilt of the head.  Was it as they expected? Had the Zora extended their radius of scouting? But then what would that have to do with the creatures in the lake?  ‘What are you doing out here?’ they clarified their inquiry.

“I’m catching fish!” she answered, much to Ahnu’s immediate relief. “They’ll sell in no time flat or the general store in Zora’s Domain!”

Was that the name of it? The kingdom of the Zora?

‘Zora—‘ Ahnu began to sign, quickly cutting themself off to interject vocally, now reassured enough to do so. Also, they couldn’t immediately recall any sign for that location, if there even was one. “Zahs-Zora’s...Dommmain?” 

“Yes! We’re pretty far away right now...” she replied, before gesturing to the incredibly swollen and squirming netted bag she had slung over her shoulder, filled to the brim with an assortment of various live fish. “But there are a lot of rare and hearty fish to catch here, so it’s a lot of fun!” She then let the bag fall to her feet behind her, turning to dig around in the loose opening. “Here! Have one!”

She turned back to Ahnu, holding a gigantic blue bass out towards them, which flailed about but ultimately failed to slip out of her strong grip. It looked a lot like the fish Ahnu had shot out of the water the night before, a “Hearty Bass” if they recalled correctly. They briefly inspected the fish, before looking up at Mei questioningly. 

“Aww, it’s okay, no need to be shy about a gift!” she assured them. “Think about it as thanks for breaking up the monotony in my routine! I’ve been swimming back and forth between here and the Domain for about three months now, with little variation between trips, so it was refreshing to get to meet you!”

At that, Ahnu gladly accepted the fish and bowed farewell to the Zora, who slunk back into the water. Storing it away, they swam over the rest of the way to the largest islet in the lake, which was their original destination before they’d been flagged down by the kind woman, and the general location their Slate’s dowsing application was directing them towards. 

There they found a Shrine in a small basin that was starting to fill with rainwater, which usually must have evaporated in between showers. They also found a single drenched fox that was struggling to make its way out of the rocky bowl, which was a strange sight, but one they shrugged off. Must have swam all the way out here, for some unknown reason. 

Unsure of the ramifications of flooding the interior of the ancient puzzle rooms, Ahnu quickly activated the Shrine and entered, determined to complete it before the gaining centimeters of water could lap at it’s platform and warp gate. 

Thankfully, it was one of the shorter puzzle Shrines that made up for its lack of complexity with the ingenuity required to solve the single obstructing element of it. Ahnu found it pretty fun to launch themself up on rail guided ironstone via a controlled detonation of their bomb rune, and were pleased to have found an eightfold blade to replace the one they’d broken on a stalfos’ skull a while back. 

_ “May the Goddess smile upon you.” _ Ya Naga declared, parting with both Ahnu and their mortal form at the psionic ring of their blessing in the Hylian’s head. 

_ “And on you.”  _ Ahnu replied, gazing with soft eyes as the Monk’s body dissipated. Nearly two dozen Shrines completed, and they were still never completely prepared for how harrowing the hauntingly beautiful sight was. They took some solace in knowing that even if they didn’t feel like the hero the devout followers of the Goddess awaited, they could at least relieve them of their primordial posts, and return their souls to the Goddess personally. “Farewell.”

* * *

Atop the Lake Tower, Ahnu assessed the inventory of the Slate, picking through their “Materials” tab as they grilled more fish over a nearby fire. 

“Should have kept this organized from the start...” they mumbled to themself, sliding yet another item into their newly created “Key Items” tab. Originally, everything they stored into the Slate that wasn’t a melee weapon, a bow, a shield, or some form of garb was tucked away into the materials tab, and they’d only had enough foresight to create a “Food” category back on the Plateau. After moving some items that weren’t fit for their materials section out and into their newest tab, like their canvas sheet, their medley of dishes, that neat copper box they picked up back at the Dueling Peaks, and a few other things they’d hoarded in their journey so far, they quickly reorganized all the categories of the Slate’s storage to their liking, and were currently inputting names for all the items the device didn’t seem to appropriately register. 

They’d spent the better part of the last two days meticulously taking out most of the enemies that had set up camp around the Sheikah Tower, likely sometime post it’s eruption from beneath the earth, considering how haphazardly all their armaments, supplies, and shoddy wood barriers were thrown about the ragged plates of recently broken and up-heaved bedrock. Of course, most of that around the raised region was likely natural, but a predominant portion around the Tower itself was in a greatly exacerbated state. 

It reminded them of the last Tower they’d activated, back in the Lanayru region. Perhaps several groups of monsters saw fit to charge upon the Tower’s, post raising, and siege some portion of the territory around them? It was likely a hypothesis that didn’t hold true for every single one of the tall and glowing structures in the land, regardless of how half consistent a supposition it was. 

Finished up with their organizing, and in a better mood because of it, Ahnu stabbed the hearty bass they were gifted a couple days prior with a steel skewer that they’d bought back In Kakariko with the rest of their cutlery, and began to munch away whilst looking over the South horizon, only using the scope of their Slate intermittently. 

For the first time, Ahnu could see the  _ ocean. _

It was just over ten kilometers away—the unending body of water the Slate dubbed the Faron Sea—and they greatly preferred the sight of it to that of Lake Hylia. A bit to the East, and a few kilometers closer to their position, appeared to be yet another Stable, and a particularly inviting forest that draped the main road Ahnu assumed would lead to it. 

With a route so quickly determined, Ahnu finished their food and settled in for a night of roughing it on the Tower, wanting to get plenty of rest for their journey through the region of Faron. 

* * *

The first striking thing Ahnu noticed, walking along the designated trail of the Faron Woods, was the unique architecture of the unending ruins peppered about the entirety of the trail and forest. 

A pair of ancient, overgrown, mossy pillars in different states of time-beget disarray served as a sort of gateway into the temperate woods—elaborately carved in a manner Ahnu had yet to encounter before then. Despite the damage, they found the structures to be particularly imposing, but in the engrossing sort of manner. The curious style and heft of the constructions—heavily detailed across the entirety of its uniformly patchy green stone—made all Hylian architecture Ahnu had gauged up until now, save perhaps the Bridge of Hylia, look comparatively dainty and simplistic. Also like the Bridge of Hylia, the weathering on the structures appeared just as ancient—only with no visible attempts to restore any portion of the archaic columns able to be descried. 

_ Had _ Hylians built this? Or rather, Hyruleans as a whole? To what type of people, in all the lands, did these ruins belong?

“Interesting.” Ahnu whispered to themself, as their fingertips traced the wavy sub-detailing that ran down the face of one the less dilapidated pillar. Symmetric, yet also sinuous, which seemed to be the key-most element on the patterning of the architecture—whereas that of Hylians was only the former, and that of the ancient Sheikah only the latter. 

Traveling beyond the threshold of the columns that served to introduce them to the expanse of forest ruins they’d only be seeing more of as they continued, it didn’t take long for Ahnu to divert from the path they’d initially set out to take, towards the Stable. As soon as their Slate had picked up on a nearby Shrine, they didn’t hesitate in choosing to remain on the East-bound path when presented with a fork in the road. Unsurprisingly, they found more ruinous pillars surrounding the Shrine, amber fluorescence from the ancient Sheikah stupta reflecting softly on the old stone around it—but before that, they’d passed a carving far more mystifying.

Among the pillars and pedestals, erect and fallen alike, Ahnu stumbled upon a statue—rather, the head of one. 

It appeared to be the stylized depiction of some sort of creature with a large snout, a prominent set of tusks when Ahnu circled about its perimeter, and an intriguing stripe of ridges that started from the bridge of its nose and lead all the way down the top of its head until it met the abrupt end of the edifice. Trailing down the crest that arched around the back of it, they found a pair of strangely carved hoops that were either meant to appear as ears or mimic ornate earrings. From the front of either side, they could see a row of what they assumed to be teeth biting into the earth, as the entire monument appeared to be partially buried or at least deeply nestled into the ground. 

There was no constructed body nearby for it to have been broken off of, so they assumed that the stone was deliberately created to be just a head of—something—a boar, maybe? That was the only animal they could currently recall in their mind that came close to resembling the thing.

They pressed a hand to the center of its snout, gently dragging it across the burnished surface of rock that was practically infused with moss—signifying the sheer age of it all. Younger or older than the Bridge of Hylia regardless, the stone beneath their fingers had certainly endured the brunt of time and nature far worse—though admittedly, that gave it a certain charm that all the more endeared it to Ahnu. 

They pulled away from the curiosity, and headed to activate the Shrine. Now that they’d brushed up on their combat skills, the Minor Test of Strength within was beyond effortless to complete.

* * *

“This place just supports dragon theory so well!” Totsuna exclaimed, waving her bare skewer around like a baton in her excitement. “Constant yet sporadic lightning across the ruins, rivers winding through the landscape…”

“Pfff.” Suzuma exhaled, amused. She picked at the fire with her own stick, and remarked, “how does literally any of that support this ‘Dragon Theory’ of yours?”

“Because—!” the still beaming woman readily replied, not an ounce of her enthusiasm waning under the pressure of skepticism. “It’s almost like the land was carved up! You know, I heard this incredible myth from an elder at the Lakeside Stable—“

“Heh. I know, I know.” Suzuma interrupted. You’ve already told me!”

“Well, yeah, but I haven’t told them!” Totsuma gestured to Ahnu, who was chomping down into some spicy peppers they found out behind the head of the statue near the Shrine that they’d examined earlier—the same statue the three Hylians now camped besides. Evidently, it was ubiquitous for travels of any denomination to group up come nightfall—regardless of whether or not they knew each other—or to travel together temporarily if heading the same direction. Whether it was some unspoken rule amongst vagabonds, some form of common sense to stick in a group for as long as possible for safety in numbers, or just a break from the inherent loneliness of adventuring solo, Ahnu couldn’t tell. Perhaps some varying combination of the two. 

They’d come across the two travelers—who funnily enough, both bore names with ‘uma’ at the end—when they’d left the Shrine. Night had fallen when they were heading back up the trail they’d come to head down the South path, still intending to journey towards what was evidently the same destination as the two women. Though not particularly tired, Ahnu elected to spend the night with them, which turned out to be a particularly interesting choice on their part. The researcher of myth and self-proclaimed fan of anything related to dragons was a wellspring of intriguing tales, and was currently going on about how practically everything in the Faron region was proving supplemental to her theories about the mythical scaled behemoths. 

“Besides, have you even seen some of the Zonai ruins around these parts?” Totsuma added, gesturing to the pillars behind Ahnu and to the head monument behind herself. “Like this boar! There are other statues of the same make and age, littered all over the place. A few boars, some owls, and even a couple of dragons!”

“You know I haven’t seen a damned thing.” Suzuma answered. “I’m from up North, and I was meandering about, lost, only a little further East when you found me and turned me in the right direction.”

‘Wait. Wait.’ Ahnu signed, waving to get the attention of the women. “Zoh...Zo-nai?”

Totsuma’s eyes widened some. Suzuma’s rolled. 

“Do you not know about the ancient tribe that built these ruins?” she asked, more excited than incredulous. She’d practically given an entire presentation on the Zonai to Suzuma before Ahnu came along, and she was clearly raring to go for round two. 

Ahnu shook their head.

Without any hesitation, Totsuma shoved her stick into the fire the three Hylians sat around, setting it alight, and hopped up to her feet. She turned towards the back end of the boar monument she was just leaning against, and beckoned Ahnu with her free hand. 

“Come over here real quick!” she said, pacing over to the crest Ahnu had noted earlier. They did as told, and stopped a fair length from her as she stood next to the boar’s hoops. She pointed to a segment of the ornamentation, holding up her blazing stick to add light for the sake of Ahnu’s clarity. “See this here?”

They watched as she traced a pattern with her forefinger, realizing that it was in fact one of many of the same icon, repeated all over the crest—a swirl with a tick. 

“This—“ she declared, “—is the symbol of the Zonai”

“Yeah, yeah.” Suzuma called from behind the two, sounding uninterested, or at least exasperated. “The ancient people disappeared millennia ago.”

“At least ten!” Totsuma corrected indignantly, heading back over to the fire with Ahnu in tow. “With all the research I’ve done to prep me for my visit to the Faron region, I’ve concluded that they must have disappeared sometime before the ‘Great Victory.’”

Ahnu barely registered that she was likely referring to the defeat of the Calamity, roughly 10,000 years ago, as they sat back down with legs crossed. 

“They depicted divine virtues in the form of animal motifs—“ Totsuma resumed with her characteristic fevor, “—mostly the animals I mentioned prior, but if you look closely at some of the columns around here you can see other creatures engraved into the stone, like snakes!”

“Oh?” Ahnu noised with a tilt of their head, before signing, ‘So is that why you came here? To inspect the architecture?’

“Yes! But there’s more than just that.” She replied. “I met a traveling cartographer a while back, who’s been trying to accurately map out regions of Hyrule that’ve been overlooked in the past. He’s not much of a fighter, so he uses these spooky enchanted monster masks to evade trouble—“

Monster masks? That sounded neat. In fact, that sounded exactly like what Ahnu’s heart mask was. 

“—and he infiltrated the most dense portion of the Zonai Ruins to the East a little over a year ago. He got pretty far up along this wavy river that runs right through it, and managed to get a decent sketch of the literal mouth it bled off from before the various monsters that stood guard around the area chased him off.” She smiled wide over to Ahnu from across the fire. “And get this, the spring that feeds the water—“

“—is shaped like the head of a dragon.” Suzuma interjected flatly, with only a small smile of satisfaction gracing her lips when Totsuma shot her a dirty, but not particularly serious look

“Hey!” Totsuma snapped. “You spoiled the best part!”

“Alright, sorry. My bad.” Suzuma responded, raising her hands in an open gesture of admittance. “But hey, at least I  _ was _ listening to you earlier when you accused me of spacing off during your whole speech.”

Totsuma gave off a defiant little ‘humph’ at that, before pointing to the other woman with her smoldering stick in a manner that was equally accusatory. 

“Well alright Ms.grumpy,” she said, “if you’re so bored with me and my stories, why don’t you tell us about yourself then?”

“Wha—I never said that!” Suzuma stammered, eyes wide. Her head darted over to Ahnu, as if for help, but the younger Hylian was hardly aware of there even being an issue, and stared off just behind her complacently, which seemed to be the closest thing to consistent eye-contact for them. She turned back to Totsuma with a sheepish expression. “Besides, you wouldn’t want to hear it. It’s kinda depressing.”

“Aww, don’t be like that.” Totsuma replied, her own face quickly softening at the other woman’s words. “You listened to all of my droning about dragons and Zonai for like, six hours now. I’d like to get to know a little about you, in turn.”

“Uh.” Suzuma noised, flustering at the other’s sincerity and rubbing a shoulder absently. “Ah—alright. But it’s not a long story…”

Totsuma and Ahnu leaned in, ready to listen, which made Suzuma shift nervously. 

“It was a while back…” she started. “I’d lost my best friend, a horse I’d been traveling with for years and years, and then…” Suzuma paused for a second, eyes glazed over by a thin sheen of condensing water she had to blink away. “I heard this tale of a fountain in the Faron Grasslands… A magical fountain that can revive lost horses.”

So she was attempting to bring back her lost horse? That was quite the heavy subject, and one Ahnu empathized with. 

When Suzuma turned her head up from the blazes of the dying fire, she startled at seeing Totsuma having leaned in, even  _ closer _ to her face. 

“Tha—that’s all there is to it!” Suzuma sputtered. “I just suck with directions, so I got lost and ran into you…”

Totsuma smiled at her, and brought up her hands to clasp the other woman’s shoulders. 

“Well alright then!” Totsuma declared aloud, apparently having come to some conclusion that neither Suzuma or Ahnu had.

“Wha—“ Just as the taller woman was about to ask what she was going on about, the dragon fanatic continued. 

“We’re gonna travel together from now on!” Totsuma answered preemptively and proudly. “I’m great with directions, and you aren’t too bad with a sword, so I’ll get you to that Horse fountain!”

“But, wait, what?!” Suzuma asked, incredulous. “Oh, no. I wouldn’t wanna impose upon you like that—“

“No buts!” Totsuma interrupted. “I wanna help you, so just let me!”

“Uh—uh.” Suzuma looked over to Ahnu for help, but they just shrugged at her. She sighed in resignation, and gingerly looked back up to Totsuma. “Alright, I guess. If you’re fine with it…”

“Very!” She gladly replied and she sat back down and away from a flushed Suzuma, before her features shifted to contemplative. “Now, what was I talking about before…?”

Suzuma sighed, but smiled some too, before supplying, “—River that’s shaped like a dragon.”

“Oh right!” Totsuma exclaimed, turning back to Ahnu with a big grin and excitedly splayed hands. “So listen to this! I hear that deeper into the rainforest, in the heart of the Zonai Ruins, there’s a GIGANTIC dragon statue that houses some sort of prehistoric altar...”

* * *

Ahnu split off from the two women come morning, politely declining the offer to travel with them to the Stable in favor of pursuing a strange noise they could faintly hear off in the distance, despite the ambiance of the lush forest superimposing itself over the distinct sound—

—a sound that was suspiciously similar to the playing of an  _ accordion _ . 

There were rows of monsters staged above and around the designated road through the woods, aimed towards the center and distance of either side of the trail, clearly looking to ambush travelers. Ahnu simply diverted from the path altogether, and took out all unsuspecting monsters from behind, only once having to leap off a ridge to take down three archer Bokoblins across the way all at once, before hitting the ground. Suffice to say, they were feeling pretty good about their archery skills. 

Soon enough, they spotted the source of what was clearly a familiar toon, and sprinted in the direction of the Rito bard. 

“Wh—whah?!” Kass stammered at the sight of the blur of blue that dashed towards them out of the corner of his eye, cutting off his music and flailing some before he realized who it was as they decelerated in their approach. “O-oh, it’s you! You gave me quite the fright!”

‘Sorry.’ Ahnu signed. ‘Excited.’

“Hah, I’m charmed.” Kass replied sincerely, his sweet smile reaching his eyes. “And I’m glad that we’ve met again! I trust you’ve been keeping well?”

When Ahnu nodded, Kass gave them a quick once over.

“Ah-Hah! And I can see that you did visit the village I recommended! That’s Sheikah stealth gear, isn’t it?”

They nodded again, but stiffly. Kass might have noticed. 

“Hmm. Ah, well.” he continued, somewhat awkwardly. “I know a song about this place.”

Ahnu looked up at him, head tilted and interest piqued, which garnered another smile from the Rito musician. 

“I was wondering if you’d like to hear the ancient verse passed down in this region?” he inquired. “And perhaps you may even be able to put your puzzle solving prowess to the test again?”

* * *

_ “Where the forest dragon splays its jaws, _

_ A shrine sleeps with noble cause.” _

As soon as Kass deemed fit to mention the nearby Damel forest to the North, Ahnu pulled out their Slate and examined the map. It only took a glance for them to spot the dragon shaped river that ran through the woods the Rito recommended, recalling how Totsuma had told them about it the night prior. They shared their findings with Kass, showing him the screen, before bounding off towards the territory.

Expecting prominent monster populations in the area, they chose to walk around the entirety of the winding river as opposed to along its shore where multiple Bokoblins camped and lizalfos swam in patrol. They only diverted from the overlooking ridge occasionally to forage, which earned them a fair and growing amount of large and spiked fruits the Slate dubbed “Hearty Durians.”

They noticed that the temperate woods had long since transitioned into that of a rainforest, with far warmer weather to match. Being the first time that they were graced with temperatures above the 60’s in Fahrenheit, Ahnu found it to be a pleasant change, considering that wearing only mild garb always left them just a tad cooler than they would have liked. It was surprising for them to find that they enjoyed the heat more than they did the cold, especially after having traveled for around three months. 

What they didn’t like, however, was the sheer humidity of the region. 

A dense fog had moved in during their travels, setting over the low river ravine. It wasn’t particularly difficult for Ahnu to traverse, considering that they were following a pin they’d placed on their map, but it was annoying—if a tad unnerving—to not be able to see a fair distance in any direction due to the vapor and dark of the night. They moved to higher ground in response, hoping to get above the fog cover, but only succeeded in finding an obnoxious Korok-boulder puzzle. After obtaining a seed from the tree spirit, they wandered off in the general direction of the mark on their Slate, but had their attention pulled away multiple times by the lush offerings of the land around them. 

That’s why it came as yet another surprise to them, to have turned a corner around a thick and tropical tree in pursuit of a dragonfly, only to stumble upon the tremendous statue of a  _ Dragon _ , mouth held open in invitation, with its closest claw perched only a couple dozen meters away from their location. A fairly large tree had long since dominated the intimidating beast, growing atop its head with a widespread mass of sinuous roots winding throughout its stone skull in a death grip, many having found their way into the creature by means of cracks and gaps likely caused by the very overgrowth. 

Stupefied by the sight, it took Ahnu a moment to take it in, and even longer to realize that the plume of fog that permeated the region seemed to disperse within a relative radius of the grand thing, all the more implying some great significance. 

Eventually, they found their way into the hollowed interior of the thing from one of many exposed openings in its head, not trusting the front entrance on account of all the Lizalfos archers posted about the ruined grounds. They were quickly validated in doing so, taking out the silver Moblin that stood guard from behind the gargantuan stone dragon's teeth, having unfortunately chosen to face the outside. They dispatched the lizard monsters one by one, all of them also having made the reasonable choice to space themselves out amongst the built-basin and aim themselves towards what they all perceived to be the most likely point of intrusion. Ahnu made good use of the extended range on their phrenic bow. 

As soon as they could confirm all monsters in the vicinity were taken care of, Ahnu returned to the mouth of the dragon, eager to discover its Shrine. 

They were quickly disappointed when an eye-sweep of the area proved it to hold little more than some columns with ornate and winged iron torch brackets, and an altar that surrounded a fairly large statue of the Goddess, Hylia. 

Ahnu had to admit, after Kakariko, they were… wary, to say the least. They cautiously eyed the surprisingly detailed engraving that was meant to resemble her face, reluctant but also very much so compelled to acknowledge her. 

They slowly crept over to her offering pedestal, unmindful of the water that pooled around her and up their shins, streams of moonlight coming in from the holes in the great dragon's head glinting off the surface where countless fallen leaves undulated, parting as Ahnu passed. Their eyes never left hers, closed as they were, and they placed their hands together, one set of fingers over the back of the other instead of both palms facing each other in prayer, atop the bare plinth, and waited. 

_ “...” _

They felt it. That psionic connection that felt like a cool rush of blood through their scalp. A palpable link to a presence unseen. The kind they only ever felt when they heard the voice of the Goddess, the Monks, and back on the Great Plateau when they first…

_ “You have done well to find this spring.” _

Her silence, perhaps contemplative, or even observatory, was broken. 

_ “Offer Farosh’s scale, received from the golden spirit, to the Spring of Courage.” _

Is that what this place was? 

_ “I, Goddess Hylia, will guide you.” _

And she was gone, with no further instruction. 

After an extended moment of pause, Ahnu finally stepped back and looked away from the statue. Peering behind it, they finally noticed the obvious door, sealed shut. They approached and inspected it, running a palm over the stone while noting little more than the patterned carving along the segments they assumed would lift when unlocked. 

Considering that they didn’t even know what a “Farosh scale” was, they figured that it wouldn’t be anytime soon. Not until they appeased the Goddess with her specified offering. 

Ahnu frowned. 

* * *

Now that it’d been pointed out to them, Ahnu couldn’t stop seeing the symbol of the Zonai everywhere, as it branded practically every other surface of their ruins in spades. The faces of the columns, the bodies of the dragon totems that were spaced along the trails, and even some patches of bricks bore the tailed swirl. 

Figuring that the majority of the monsters littered along the ravine path would be geared towards the South, Ahnu felt more confident traveling along the river shore, shooting Lizalfos out of the water like fish and sneaking up on the camps of Bokoblins and Chuchus spread about. 

They also managed to sneak up on a trio of a curious sub-species of Lizalfos of the electric variety, which they only discovered after dispatching them and collecting their oddly colored tails. What excited them even more so was the medley of incredible weapons the lizard monsters were carrying. They picked over the spear one of them had, but walked away with a ragged and fierce looking “Lizal Tri-Boomerang” and an ornately decorated and wonderfully sturdy “Royal Claymore.”

The sheer amount of supplies they amassed from raiding the monsters of Damel Forest put them in a less bitter mood regarding the Shrine they were denied access to—though they did find their inventory wanting for more regular old arrows. By the time that they’d finally returned to Kass, who was fortunately camping out nearby the area they’d last seen him, they were less upset and more exasperated. 

“Ah, so there was no Shrine to be found?” he asked, feathered brow furrowing. “Only an ancient altar to the Goddess?”

“Yeah…” Ahnu replied, somewhat sullen. 

Kass, ever the perspicacious and sensitive to the changes in others, noticed their mood. 

“Ah, chin up my friend!” he attempted to reassure them, brushing off the prior subject with a wave of his wing. “That alone in an incredible discovery! I’m sure it was quite the sight to behold.”

They considered his words, before nodding along. The Dragon statue was pretty cool. 

“Well, I think I’ll be heading off soon myself, then.” Kass said, switching subjects. “I’m happy to have shared this song with you, my young friend”

“Oh…” Ahnu noised neutrally. He  _ was _ a traveling musician, after all. ‘Somewhere nearby?’ they signed. 

“As a matter of fact, yes.” he replied with his usual kind quirk of the eye. “I’ll be heading deeper into the Faron region, actually. Have you ever heard of a place called ‘Calora Lake?’”

Ahnu was again disappointed to see that their Slate possessed no such location, with only a blank map to greet them to the East. 

* * *

“Ugh, why do I always seem to attract monsters…” Meeshy bemoaned, a compress of cold well water pressed to her head. 

“Hah!” laughed Perosa, handing her and Ahnu bowls of stir-fry. “Don’t take it so personally. Those jerks had been riding around like they owned the plain for a while now, attacking every traveler that had the gall to step foot on these here grasses. We were all fed up with them.”

The old stable keep adjusted the blanket draped across the aching woman’s shoulders, looking up to Ahnu with a bright smile that made the wrinkles in her face deepen some, making her look even more homely. 

“It’s a good thing that this here adventurer came to your rescue.” 

Ahnu ate away at the fried red-meat and mixed vegetables with gusto, always happy to accept a free meal, especially after painstakingly diverting the attention of a pack of horse-riding Bokoblins from a downed Meeshy, who evidently hit her head on a rock when jumping out of the way of a charging horse. They took great care in shooting each of the pig-men off of their steeds, sure to not injure the horses, and dispatching each on even ground. After all of that, and carrying the poor woman over to the nearby Highland Stable, they were starving. 

“Here you go, dear.” Perosa said, pulling an endura carrot out of a pouch that was tied to her belt, offering it to Ahnu. “This is a small token of my thanks!” 

Ahnu gladly accepted, examining the root vegetable. If they recalled correctly, they only ever managed to find these types of carrot growing around the Great Fairy fountain of Cotera. 

“Those there only grow in ground that’s enhanced by magic.” Perosa supplied, noticing how closely Ahnu was analyzing it. “I’ve got a pot of soil out in the back of the Stable that I asked a fairy to bless back in younger years.”

“Where did you find the seeds to grow it?” Ahnu asked. 

The old woman smiled a little bit wider. 

“Well, since you’ve done this Stable a great favor…” she responded, pulling a map out of her coat’s pocket, unfolding it for Ahnu to see. “Why don’t I tell you about a little place nearby that I found in my youth, where these carrots were growing above in excess?”

* * *

After a night of rest, reading something about “Ancient horse gear” in some of the Stable’s supplemental reading material, and handling the Shrine that overlooked the Fural Plain, Ahnu met up with the pair of women they’d met several days prior, Suzuma and Totsuma, who’d been recuperating in preparation for their sleuthing around the grasslands. It was early in the morning, and Totsuma was still sleeping as Suzuma was whipping up crepes for the two of them when Ahnu approached, recounting the information Perosa saw fit to share with them. 

“Really?!” Suzuma exclaimed, so intent on what Ahnu said that she nearly let her batter overcook. “Ack! Hold on, hold on!” She quickly plated the food, drizzling some honey onto the crepes from a jar she pulled out of her travel backpack. She looked back up to Ahnu, excitement and relief in her eyes. 

“So, Malanya Spring? And it’s just South of here?” she inquired, desperate for confirmation. 

Ahnu nodded with a soft smile, before adding in sign, ‘Just take the West path, and when you get to the fork in the road further to the South, take the one that heads East.’

“Great! That’s incredible!” She cheered, eyes widening after a moment. She quickly fumbled with the opening of a pocket on her bag, pulling out a small notepad and scribbling into it furiously. “Ah! I need to write this down! Gotta tell Totsuma, or else I’ll just get us lost...“ 

She tucked the notebook back away, glancing up to Ahnu with intense gratitude and joyous tears welling in the corners of her eyes. 

“I can't thank you enough...really, I…” she looked off to the side, towards the interior of the Stable. “This means so much to me, and—“ Her face flushed some, the pink of her cheeks prominent on her pale skin as she chuckled quietly. “I just can’t wait to introduce Totsuma to my horse…”

“Aww.” Cooed a passing Perosa, lugging a pitchfork to the back of the Stable. “That’s sweet. You should put ‘uma’ at the end of your future kids names, too.”

At that, Suzuma began sputtering incoherently, her face going beet-red and ridiculous, which earned a hearty laugh from the old woman, and a snicker from Ahnu.

* * *

Ahnu went on ahead the the supposed fountain, half to verify it's existence and half to make sure it would have been ready for the incoming pair whenever they made their way to the grounds. Sure enough, they found another one of those thorny buds that indicated a dormant fae spring. More eye-catching than the giant bulb were the large flowers that grew beneath the water of an intimidating set of bottomless-looking ponds, pulsing with bioluminescence that waxed and waned gorgeously in the night. There was an abundance of butterflies fluttering about the area, likely thriving off of the various bright flora that grew around the fountain of the Horse God, as well as frogs hopping about in the shallows of the water that rimmed the bud. 

They actually tripped over a mostly buried treasure chest while chasing one. Unearthing it, it was revealed to contain an impressive piece of horse gear that the Slate identified as a piece of Sheikah technology, so that was nice. They recall having just read about it in the “Super Rumor Mill: Volume 3” at the Highland Stable, so it was an intriguing coincidence. They didn’t have a horse, so it wasn’t exactly a useful discovery on their part, but whatever. 

Done with distractions, Ahnu finally approached the front of the thorny bud and climbed the mushroom ramp. They grazed a hand over it, intent on eliciting a response. 

A deeply drawled out “Child. Sweet child.” signaled their success. 

It took 1,000 rupees as a tribute to restore his power in the earthly realm, which was a fair price all things considered. This was a Great Fairy that specialized in tending to souls of the equine nature, after all. Raising the dead shouldn’t exactly come cheap. 

Malanya was...eccentric. His hands were unattached to his oddly shaped body, which itself was just a ragged cloak made from differently colored and patterned stripes of cloth patched together in a rustic stitching, which appeared to drape outwards in a manner that gave off the impression of a body that just wasn’t there. His head, attached to his spectral body by a column of vertebrae, was… basically just a decorated horse mask. Stained wood with puffs and braids of hair stitcking out, ornamented with copper clamps and feathers. It was uniformly symmetrical down the middle, so Ahnu though that was neat. 

They had to resist giggling when they finally realized how similar looking her was to the trademark head of the Stables—or maybe them to him, considering that he likely existed first. Maybe the comparison was intentional on the party of whoever it was that established the early Stables across Hyrule. It was rather funny to think of them having been crafted in Malanya’s image. 

After ‘jesting’ about eating and maybe smiting them, Malanya gave Ahnu a quick once over, which made the air around them tickle, before looking at them aghast. Well, he can’t exactly emote, so the impression was more conveyed by his tone. 

“...Whoa.” Malanya said softly, but with feeling. “Do you really not own a single horse?”

Ahnu shrugged, before reasoning, “I do stuff that’s too dangerous to keep one around. And I rarely ever take roads they can traverse.” They pointed up the North, over the stone ridge, before adding, “I climbed a small mountain to get here, and glided down.”

“Ah. That’s fair.” Malanya agreed with an invisible shrug of his own. “And considerate too, I suppose. To each their own.”

* * *

Golden light glistened off of the deep blue ocean, as well as the thin sheen of water that coated the rocky ridge Ahnu traversed during the sunrise. The endless pane of water, stretching flat over the horizon, had their full and rapt attention. It was a particularly beautiful sight, what with the addition of the rainbow—the result of a brief morning shower—gently arching above and into the waves. This was the closest they’d been to the ocean yet. 

It made their chest feel tight, but not exactly in a bad way. 

When they finally managed to adequately absorb the view to their satisfaction, Ahnu cranked their head towards the North, finding themself standing over a verdant plane that was littered with trees, puddles and ponds, and even several of those strange towers they’d managed to find at least a couple dozen times now, spread throughout what little they’ve seen of Hyrule so far. The kind where there was always some form of treasure on top, waiting to reward whoever was capable of climbing it. 

And even further off, a little to the East, was a larger, different kind of tower, that glowed a bright and unmistakable orange. Beyond even that was the red of countless cliffs and flat peaks, all of which were draped in the dense foliage of a jungle. 

Their next destination. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First real update! (considering that I uploaded the first 14 chapters all at once...) 
> 
> Eventually, I might post some art related to this chapter on mu tumblr, so look out for that if it interests you! Next time, Ahnu goes even deeper into the Faron region, and discovers that they have some less than positive feelings about the constant lightning storms that plague the region.


	16. Chapter 16--  The Sound of Lightning and Other Loud Noises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu explores the Floria territory in the Faron region and discovers just how much the don't like loud noises.

‘Please never do this again.’ Ahnu signed, their furrowed brows being the only feature of their face that portrayed just how concerned they were. 

“What? But we—“ Nat began to object, but was immediately cut off by her sister pulling her in close by the shoulder and slapping a hand over her mouth.

“We won’t.” Meghyn affirmed, completely ignoring the squirming and muffled protests of her sibling. “Thank you so much for saving us.”

They’d spent a day exploring the Guchini Plains, leaving no tower unclimbed or lead flat unturned. The field offered little more than an insufferable about of forest octoroks in the day and Stalkoblins in the night, though there was a single black Hinox sleeping in the crescent of a small and shallow lake further to the South of the territory, which marked the first live one they’d properly slain. They walked away with several of its teeth and nails, as well as some particularly hefty guts that strongly resembled what must have been one of its multiple stomachs. More exciting was the bow and broadsword the monster formerly possessed, dangling from the crude necklace of weaponry Ahnu happily picked through. The design and general caliber of the weapons indicated that they were of the same caliber as their recently acquired royal claymore, making the weapons a choice acquisition. 

It was only the very next morning when they started towards the jungle, did they find themself chasing after the sounds of distant and panicked hollering—which led them to the pair of sisters, being harassed by blue and black Bokoblins. Harassed probably wasn’t the right word, since where Ahnu found the swine to be more akin to a nuisance they could easily swat like bugs, the threat of the monster’s was far more present and insistent to the average Hylian. Even travelers who were relatively equipped and trained to handle dealing with the pig-men in combat _still_ struggled.

That’s why Ahnu found the gall of the women—rather, specifically that of the younger sister that seemed to drag along her older one—somewhat disconcerting, since it was clear that neither were capable of defending themself. Travelers like them absolutely baffled Ahnu. In a land so wrought with chaos and beings of dark magics that want to kill anyone that isn’t one of them, common sense would dictate that everyone capable should know how to defend themself and the others around them. Ahnu was more empathetic to the plight of merchants or caravan conductors, with their occupations demanding travel whether or not they know how to fight, but for any wayward traveler, there was no excuse for them to not know how to take care of themself. 

And to have done all this, despite their lack of defensive prowess and the risk such posed to them, just for hearty truffles? Ridiculous. 

Ahnu sighed deeply. 

Perhaps it was unfair to expect a certain level of capability of others—it certainly was unwarranted, in the least. In a calmer, kinder world, the most people would have to worry about in the wild was finding food, a clean source of drinking water, a shelter to protect them from the elements, and packing any supplies that would assist them in sustaining them. But life wasn’t that simple in Hyrule, was it?

Giving the sisters half a dozen truffles, Ahnu bid them farewell with a bow, and continued on East along the riverside route. 

* * *

They ended up running into a particularly violent thunderstorm about a half hour before they did the Stable, which ended up being the rudest introduction to the intermittent climate of a region to date. 

Ahnu could tell the moment the atmosphere amongst the showers around them shifted from mundane and regular to charged. The sheer amount of static in the air was uncomfortably palpable in the heavy rains, prompting them to check the Slate for confirmation what they didn’t want to recognize. Sensing how the electricity in the air was all converging towards and condensing in the weaponry on their back, save their wooden Sheikah shield—which they’d become rather fond of and accustomed to always using—Ahnu thankfully had enough sense to respond by swapping out their flameblade and knight’s bow for a dragonbone moblin club and their phrenic bow. 

Unfortunately, there was no amount of precaution Ahnu could take to spare themself from the insane proximity of the un-ending lightning strikes. Though, it wasn’t the electricity alone that they found themself actively dreading, panicked in response to— _fearing_ , even. 

It was the unbelievably loud, sudden **_BOOM_ ** and **_CRACK_ ** that would always follow. Sometimes it was as immediate as the lightning, resounding through the sky and tearing through their skull as frightfully fast and imposing as the colossal pillars of ragged energy and light. Other times, when the dark of the gloomy sky would abade for a few flickers of a distant and silent strike, Ahnu would be forced to wait however many agonizing seconds it took for the harrowing crackle to make its way over to them and into their rapidly-processing, fraught mind. The unpredictable yet unrelenting sounds that stirred their brain and made their bones vibrate uncomfortably was absolute torture on their sensitive ears, but more so due to just how overstimulating it was. 

They did _not_ like thunder. 

All of this, Ahnu realized only five minutes into their trek through the storm.

They had to choose between sprinting swiftly through the horrible weather with their arms swinging in the normal manner that one would motion to propagate movement, or to proceed at an awkward gait that prioritized them muffling the dreadful incoming of lightning at all times with their hands, effectively slowing them and forcing them to spend even longer in the weather. Unable to succinctly settle on any proceeding, Ahnu ran through the downpour as fast as they could, constantly jolted out of focus and into a pressed frenzy every time the harsh **_SNAP_ ** of thunder whipped through the air, startling and slowing them as they grabbed at their aching head and smushed their palms against their ears, eyes automatically clamping shut every time. 

Sure enough, they’d slipped and fallen numerous times as they raced in such a dire state, and were drenched in mud and rainwater by the time they’d reached the Riverside Stable. So panic-stricken and disoriented when the organized mess of tarps and wood framing came into view, Ahnu failed to decelerate on their approach—desperate to get somewhere they could just curl up and be still. 

They dashed through one of the entrances of the tented structure, a blur to all other patrons taking shelter from the storm, and crashed into the thick, stretched canvas of the the Stable—which was only a marginally less painful experience than if they’d slammed into one of the log beams the layers of abrasive covering were pulled taunt between. Water and dirt splattered from their disheveled hair and clothes, leaving an impression on the cloth walls as Ahnu was flung back by the residual force, throwing their weapons off to clatter at the wooden floor some few meters behind them, and their own body onto the foyer rug with a heavy **_thud._ **

There they stayed, flat on their back and still, knees bent, hands clasped on either side of their head, with their eyes tightly shut and teeth grinding. 

* * *

It took a good half minute for anyone in the stable to do anything, all the onlookers far too shocked into silence by the abrupt and fevered arrival of what looked to be some crazy mess of a Hylian, dressed in some strange outfit that bore the symbol of the Sheikah, who was very obviously terrified. 

The Hylian flinched every time the sound of lightning pounding the ground and rumbling the earth blared through the unobstructing canvas of the Stable, their body spasming some after each round. It was particularly hard to watch their insensate anxiety attack when electricity struck the horse-head of the haven itself, as all staff and regulars knew the frequent storms had a penchant for aiming at the only inhabited construction in all of the Floria territory. 

Evidently, this particular traveler wasn’t as keyed in as the rest, and considering that no one within the Stable could recognize them, there wasn’t any steady course of action the people were sure to take. 

It was eventually the timid Cima, a Stable-hand with who feared lightning like the Yiga did the Goddess, that stepped forward. She gathered their possessions that had been strewn about, from their shield, bow, and club, to the ornate styling chopsticks that were flung from their hair, which was spread around them in a dark, wet mess on the floor. A fellow Stable worker eventually stepped forth, helping her lug the heavy dragonbone Moblin club over to the table, where the rest of their things were set down upon. 

No one spoke, save the elder attendant of the Stable, Shay—who took great care in kneeling down besides the strange and terrified individual, so as to not spook them any further. He murmured some quiet questions to them, having to patiently repeat and reword himself several times before a set of trembling hands reluctantly left their head, quickly gesturing something in sign. 

Shay whispered something just as quick in response, before struggling back up to his feet, hobbling over to the reception desk, and requesting a special box from the Stable-master. He procured a set of small, dense, end-rounded foam bits that were capped in a gel cover—each no bigger than his thumb—and returned to the Hylians side. 

They took the old man’s offering with still-shaking hands, listening intently as he instructed on how to insert them. He merely nodded once they’d succeeded, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to hear his soft-spoken voice now that they’d secured the earplugs. 

* * *

It was sunny now, light streaming between the trees and humid mist of a new day.

Even that didn’t give Ahnu enough cause to revoke the only bit of protection their ears had against the constant lightning storms that plague the region, if what the young Stable-hand had told them was to be trusted. The plugs may have been somewhat uncomfortable at first, but they were a gods-sent grace when it came to fulfilling their intended purpose. 

After handling the Shrine near the Riverside Stable that their Slate’s sensor had been blaring about for the whole night, hidden behind a rockfall they blasted away with a rune bomb, they made to climb the framework of the Riverside Stable. As they reached the top of its horse/Malanya inspired head, they spotted the damned axe that stuck out of its forehead like a penance. 

When Cima had confided her own dreadful fear of lightning to them the night before, she mentioned how lighting had always struck the Stable every time it stormed, which was usually often and multiple times a week, sometimes even a day. Apparently lightning rods that had been installed a couple hundred meters away from the Stable in any direction had never fixed the problem, which only made Ahnu incredibly suspicious. They waited for the first moment the rain stopped altogether, never mind the Slate’s insistence that the next electric storm was still far off for a while now, to inspect the entirety of the Stable’s construction. 

Ahnu yanked the axe out of the wood, and used Magnesis to fling the offending weapon several hundred meters away, into the Floria River, before reporting their findings to a beyond relieved Cima. 

“Wha—so an axe was drawing the lightning here?” she asked, absolutely baffled as she paused her work altogether. “I mean, that’s as good as a lightning rod, isn’t it? Did someone just put it up there on purpose? That’s kind of strange, in the messed up way. 

Ahnu couldn’t agree more. With how deeply driven in the thing was, not to mention the sheer absurdity of the location, it had to have been a deliberate act on the part of _someone_. 

“Well, either way, I can’t thank you enough for looking into it!” she continued, so much more jubilant than her normally shy demeanor allowed her to be. “The lightning’s been driving me crazy since I was a little girl! Everyone at the Stable’s been used to it for years, but I never managed to ease up about the electricity.”

Everyone else at the Stable probably also had subpar hearing, too. 

“Anyways, wait around the Stable for a bit, will you?” Cima asked, putting the last of the hay into the feeding trough for the boarded horses, and removing her work gloves. “There’s something I wanna give you, as a show of my appreciation and a gift for your troubles. But uh, I might have to look around for it.”

Ahnu went to seat themself at the communal cooking pot on the other side of the Stable, grabbing their Slate from their belt and withdrawing a couple of monster parts and other ingredients. They figured that while they waited, and while it’s still dry out (or as dry as the rainforest could get, what with the constant drizzle of the thick mist that never seemed to disperse), they would try to make a few elixirs for their upcoming exploration of the Floria territory. They’d only ever distilled the raw magic out of monster remains once before, so there was a bit of a learning curve, but with the amount of potent and relatively rare, or at least difficult-to-acquire, monster parts they had on hand, they were able to mix up a few bottles full of what they felt to be decently effective potions of electric-resistance. 

A different Stable-staffer happened to be walking by as Ahnu whipped up one last batch that was a combination of zapshrooms, yellow lizalfos tail and chuchu jelly for the endowment of electrical properties, with a single Hinox tooth thrown in for the sake of longevity. 

“Whoa.” Kampo uttered, dropping the bale of hay he was hauling to move in and get a closer look at the mixture Ahnu was boiling. “Is that from a Hinox, like, for real?” he asked, pointing to the tooth as he looked up the Ahnu. 

They nodded as they continued to stir, their other hand ready with a set of chopsticks they would use to pick out the solids as soon as all significant properties were extracted. 

“Goddesses…” he mumbled under his breath, before adding, “You really must be a hardcore adventurer, huh?”

Without stilling their churning, Ahnu looked up at him with a face slightly twisted into an expression of confusion, head tilted some. 

“I mean,” Kampo went on, “I guess I shoulda’ figured. I’m the one who helped Cima move aside a couple of your things, and let me say, that bone club of yours was HEAVY.”

Ah. He was referring to the night before, when…

Ahnu looked back down to the pot with more deeply furrowed brows, abashed and somewhat ashamed. They watched the contents of the pot swirl, wanting for a distraction, and preferably an out, from the topic at hand. Fortunately, that seemed to be just what Kampo was willing to unwittingly provide. 

“Hey, I know.” he resumed with a muffled snap of his gloved hand, an idea having struck him. “If you’re big on exploration, you might like to hear about this. Do you know anything about the Floria falls?”

Ahnu looked back up at him, all too relieved that he’d shifted topic in discussion, and shook their head. 

“Well, it’s the widest waterfall of all 10 here at Floria Lake.” he supplied. “And for about the last three months now, whenever I take a stroll out on the Floria Bridge during a clear night, I’ve been seeing this orange glow coming from behind the bottom of the tallest waterfall that feeds it—the one that runs from the Riola Spring.”

Ahnu _did_ like the sound of that. Their piqued interest clearly showed on their face, wide eyes but otherwise soft and childish expression making Kampo laugh. 

“Hah ha! Figured it’d catch your fancy!” he chuckled, before pointing over to the bridge. “You can piece together what I’m talking about if you’ve got a map, or check it out yourself come nightfall at the bridge, assuming you’ll still be here of course.”

“Ah!” exclaimed a worried Cima from afar, who’d only just exit the Stable with something dark clasped in her hands. “I hope you're not bothering them too much, Kampo!” she chided, closing the distance between herself and the other two. 

“Oh, hey.” He replied, turning to his fellow Stable-hand with a curt wave. “Nah. I was just telling them about that thing behind the falls. I’ll be out of y'all's hair now.”

With that, Kampo tugged at the wire around the hay bale he was toting prior, and tossed it over his shoulder to lug away. Cima then approached Ahnu at the cooking pot, extending the item in her hand with a rather excited look on her face. 

It appeared to be some sort of fish mask, made of a material that didn’t exactly look to be leather, or anything Ahnu was familiar with for that matter. Perhaps something synthetic, like the fabric of their Stealth Gear. 

“Found it!” she chimed. “My great grandma gave it to me when I was younger. She said that the man who rebuilt the Stables back in the day let her have it when she was just a child herself.”

Ahnu frowned some at the offer, hesitant to accept such a potentially sentimentally significant item from someone they hardly knew. 

“It’s alright.” Cima quickly assured, clearly well attuned to Ahnu’s worries. “Neither she or I ever found any use for the mask. I’d hate for it to just sit in a chest all day long for the next 100 years, when an adventurer like yourself might find it handy.”

At that, Ahnu did accept the gift, bidding Cima thanks with a head bow before she went back to tending to her duties. 

There wasn’t much else they could note from the feel of the mask, other than it’s resistant, tacky texture, so they quickly finished up their last elixir, bottling it up, to store the two things away together. 

It came as a great surprise to them that the mask already had an entry in the Slate. 

Normally, Ahnu had to edit the title and description of the articles of garb they stored away into the Slate, which is something they’d only started actively keeping track of recently. The old shirt, trousers, boots, and doublet, along with their heart mask, all had to be registered, named and recorded by themself, with their “Hylian Trousers” having been the first bit of clothing to resemble something the Slate must have recognized. That’s why for the longest time, it remained the only garb with a proper summary. 

They never did question why the “Climber’s Bandana” came named and with a small bit of expositional text, but resolved in hindsight that it likely had something to do with them having received it from a Shrine, indicating that it was an article of clothing the ancient Sheikah—creators of the Slate—recognized and probably also utilized themselves. They reasoned the same for the modern “Stealth Gear” they’d bought at Kakariko, figuring it to have been similar enough to the same model the Sheikah used in the era long past. 

So, to see that the fish mask registered as a “Rubber Helm” was odd, and even a bit exciting. It implied that this was gear the Sheikah once used, or recognized. Or at the very least, that someone else once augmented the Slate in the way Ahnu did currently, specifically to include this entry. That’s what they assumed when it came to the Hylian trousers, at least. 

And if said entry could be trusted, then apparently this helm could resist electricity. 

* * *

“Ah, don’t worry about the earplugs.” Shay, the old Stable attendant assured them. “We’ve got a couple dozen more pairs lying about, and it seems like a young and adventurous whippersnapper such as yourself needs them more than any of our regulars at the Stable.” The elder chuckled some, before adding, “Besides, according to Cima, you’ve gone and solved our little decade old lightning issue. 

That was honestly the biggest relief to Ahnu, who wore their new fish mask with the rest of their stealth gear, pulled down their neck like a hood, instead of the hair bun they’d quickly become accustomed to styling. The insulating material of the helm—this “rubber” substance—was adept at dampening noise as well as resistant to electricity, but it alone had nothing on the prowess of the earplugs. Utilizing both simultaneously, the constant cacophony of the lively jungle wildlife—the chittering of an endless amount of beetles, the whooping of some hidden primates staged just out of view of the Stable-goers, the continuous shuffle of foliage and ground flora undulating in the unsteady winds, and the distant crashing of an electrical storm assuaging some other portion of the region—all of it was rendered silent. The world was effectively dead to them, as far as all auditory input was concerned. 

Normally, that would have been absolutely terrifying. Ahnu depended on their hearing just as much as they did their eyes to remain alert in the day, even more so at night when the darkness shrouded the land around them, constantly keeping track of the litany of sounds behind them. No doubt, without their heart mask and their hearing, braving the lightning storms will render them susceptible to sneak attacks from monsters. They likely wouldn’t be able to even sense minute vibrations in the ground that signaled the activity of nearby creatures due to the rumble of the pounding rains that accompanied the electrical strikes. 

A fair trade off, all things considered. That was how much Ahnu did NOT like loud, sudden noises. Thunder, especially.

“Tha-th—thank. Thank yoo-ou.” Ahnu muttered quietly while gesturing the same in Hand-Speak, straining to find their voice and struggling to face the old man. They’d be lying if they said they weren’t still mortified by their behavior the day prior. Every time their eyes caught on the corner of his own, they cringed internally and clenched their fists. 

“Hmm.” Shay hummed, his droopy lids narrowing in a gentle, uncritical kind of suspicion. With a slow, contemplative blink, he seemed to make up his mind as to where he’d take the conversation, to the benefit of their distraction. “You wouldn’t happen to have a map on you, would you?”

Ahnu nodded, still not quite looking at him. Their hand reached down to their Slate, brushing the raised accents that formed the symbol of the Sheikah eye. They realized by now that when most people asked them that question, others usually wanted to see it, and maybe compare it to their own. A majority of individuals just dismissed the fact that it was displayed on the glowing screen of a flat box, far more interested in how accurate and detailed its depiction of the land was. 

“So on this map of yours, do you see Dueling Peaks to the North of here?” he inquired, earning another nod from Ahnu. He gave a slight smile at the confirmation before resuming. “Well, apparently that used to be just one mountain a really long time ago.”

Oh? Now that was interesting, if Ahnu’s wide-eyed expression was anything to go by. The old man chuckled some at the sight of their intrigue when they finally looked up at him. 

“The legends say a dragon god split the mountain in half to forge a way through, and that’s how it went from one to two.”

“Really?” Ahnu asked in kind, head tilted some. They’d always thought the twin peaks were odd in just that very way, like they’d been sundered from a single, gargantuan mass. It’s ragged ridges ran at strange angles that were always parallel and complementary to one another—as if were one to push them together, they’d fit like a puzzle. 

“Mm-hm. That’s what I’ve heard. And recently, some are even saying they’ve seen the shadow of a large creature on the surface of Lake Floria! A young lady I met earlier this month was sure it was proof of there being some serpentine dragon roaming about the skies over Faron. Wild, isn’t that?” Shay supplied, happy to have garnered some enthusiasm from the serious traveler. “I wonder if any of that’s true, though…”

* * *

Ahnu walked about a fourth of the total length of the Floria Bridge, and were currently scoping out what looked to be the widest waterfall among the Northern flat peaks of the jungle mesa. Placing a pin at the bottom of the tallest of the three waterfalls that fed into the Floria Falls, they headed back towards the Stable, only to cross the river of its name-sake. They were intent on activating the region’s Sheikah Tower and outracing the incoming dark cloud cover. 

The expected thunderstorm moved in just as they reached the base of the Tower, which shielded them from just enough of the rain that it hadn’t diminished their ability to climb. After firing a slew of arrows into the head of the Thunder Wizzrobe that danced around its perimeter, Ahnu hurried to insert their earplugs, pull the rubber helm over their head, and double check themself for any sign of a particularly large quantity of metal on their person. 

After all their precaution, the only thing that really came as a shock to them was just how effective their countermeasures were. Of course, there was the everpresent rumble of rain they could more feel than hear, along with the occasional uptick in vibrations that accompanied the significantly muted and hollow sounding ring of thunder—but overall, the climb up the Sheikah Tower was uneventful, and hardly unpleasant. 

There was still the residual stress related to the non-negligible chance that they could be struck by lightning at any moment, but that was a probability Ahnu could bear, strange as they acknowledged the juxtaposition to be. 

Removing their State from the pedestal, they didn’t hesitate to open up the map, and check two things: that the “0” pin they’d placed earlier was in fact at the correct location—the bottom of the waterfall beneath the Riola Spring—and to find out where this Calora Lake was. After placing another pin, they were off the Tower, gliding towards the nearest and highest plateau, not even five minutes after having made it to the top. 

They didn’t have to go very far before spotting a twin set of massive Zonai statues—owls, it looked like—huddled together in the rain, with offering flats before them. First and foremost, Ahnu noted the suspicious presence that was a single hearty durian resting in the leftmost totem’s altar, and proceeded to dump another into that of the barren one, revealing a Korok. With that handled, they took a dozen or so steps back to better examine the things. 

Stylized as they were, Ahnu would have been hard pressed to identify them as anything more specific than birds, had they not possessed prior knowledge relating to the preferred motifs of the Zonai. Despite the artistic liberties taken with the depiction—factors of a culture long gone that Ahnu wasn’t mad at—the carvings were still grand and beautiful. Of course, what Ahnu found themself scouring the engraved surface of the stone for most deliberately was the straight-tailed swirl, which patterned the front of the statues’ belly’s. 

Just another interesting thing for them to abandon in pursuit of their next impulsively driven goal. 

* * *

After a day full of braving the fluctuating electrical storms, probing every body of water they came across with Magnesis to discover the scores of treasure hidden in the shallows, dispatching a fair few dozen monsters both on the flats of the jungle ground and suspended in the air by means of sky Octorok propulsion, Ahnu rested on the platform of the Shoda Sah Shrine.

Indeed, that was what awaited them from behind the tallest of the waterfalls in Floria. They had a hunch that such was the case, figuring it out as soon as that helpful Stable-hand had mentioned a faint orange glow. The dowsing of their Slate certainly bolstered the supposition, blaring as they approached the wall of tumultuous water.

Though the crashing of the falls were harsh on the ears, it was constant and consistent, with no element of unwanted surprise. They could bear the near-deafening drone of the gigantic cascade, as uncomfortable as the volume was, even without their earplugs. They did keep the fish mask on though, since it muffled the noise a decent amount. 

As they held a skewer stacked with salt and herb rubbed meat chunks and mushrooms aloft a fire, they examined yet another phrenic bow they’d recently acquired from a group of Lizalfos further down the channel that fed the Floria Falls. Holding it in their free hand, they thumbed the barren hold of the thing, noting the grooves and nicks of wear on the limbs—which were made of wood. 

It was the same model as their nonmetal bow that they’d found at the Bridge of Hylia, right down to the simplistic and decorative red staining of the burnished and matte polished surface, but it was light. Uneven too, but in that natural way you’d expect even the finest of wood works and craft to be. No wood bow was truly the same, and this one was perhaps somewhat asymmetrical, though the incredible range of the weapon was practically equal to its inflammable, non-conducting, ambiguously Sheikah-material composed doppelganger. 

Up until now, Ahnu hadn’t really questioned the high degree of variation in Sheikah-made objects and weapons, happening to own a wooden shield, a metal long sword, and a nonmetal bow all made in their distinctive style, all simultaneously. Knowing that there were sub-categories within these options, models possibly made from a range of material, made them wonder if they would ever come across a different version of that they’d so rapidly become familiar with. The prospect of finding a nonmetal shield of the mind’s eye was particularly exciting to Ahnu.

Distantly, it also made them wonder about which incarnation was the ‘modern’ one. 

The way the Sheikah they witnessed back in Kakariko went about living their lives seemed absolutely ascetic in contrast to what their technology was capable of achieving. It was obvious that there was still some of that ancient prowess hidden away in the sleepy village, which they roughly pieced together by virtue of the things Claree had told them about their stealth gear when they were getting fitted—how the fabric was a synthetic-silk, and the guard plates were of a nonmetal composition. But the technology they kept hidden from travelers seemed only to extend to minor, quality-of-life factors. 

They were, for all intents and purposes, a modest people. Clearly by choice. 

It was then that Ahnu cursed themself for not having investigated the matter further back in the village. Now, a spring of tangential questions formed from such an elusive topic—all of which regarding the curiosity that was the entirety of the Sheikah race. 

Why _did_ the ancient ones see fit to hide away their technology, anyways? Clearly, it hadn’t all just disappeared as the dead King had suggested to them back on the Great Plateau—though in hindsight, that was likely just a half-truth he’d rattled off to maintain an air of riddlesome aloofness in his disguised form. 

Fallen into obscurity due to the passing of time maybe, but there was nothing about the unknown amount of Shrines packed densely throughout all of Hyrule that they’d seen thus far that supported the notion of some great disappearance. He’d claimed that relics of theirs had been excavated, implying some level of deliberacy in the matter of obfuscation. 

Why have their modern-most generations endeavored to maintain such a level of simplicity in their day-to-day lives? What was it that drove the Sheikah to diminishing their own potential so aggressively—that keeps them in that state of mind as a civilization, even now?

Just a few more things hanging from the endless strings of questions that Ahnu had neither the supplemental context, nor the full scope of the contemporary ramifications to answer, let alone sufficiently analyze. 

They sighed, and stored away the wood-variant of the same kind of hyper-ranged bow they’d been using intermittently ever since acquiring it. If there was at least one thing they’d reasoned to their satisfaction, it was that the weapon on their back had a strong chance of being far older than they ever could have assumed. 

* * *

It was the next night—really, almost morning—before they had finally reached the Riola Springs. It took a grueling 16 hours of climbing, with a record lack of distractions from the task at hand on Ahnu’s part, for them to climb up various levels of the jungle Mesa. Due to the near-constant storming, they had to travel farther and farther laterally on each plateau and flat peak in order to find ridges angled enough or roots thick and ragged enough for them to get a proper hold and footing to elevate with minimal error on account of the rain, which was damned near impossible at some points. They were dedicated to the task though, and reached the shore of the spring sometime around 4:00AM. 

They couldn’t rest easy quite yet, considering that they didn’t particularly fancy the idea of pitching camp out in the open, in the middle of an electrical storm. 

Overlooking the spring was an enormous opened cavern, which was more or less a gaping hole leading to the Angel Peak that was either eroded or chiseled out of the side of Mount Floria—or both. Ahnu fired off a single bomb arrow into the swarm of electric Keese that rested on the ceiling, and double checked that none remained by letting off a shrill whistle into the tunnel, which received no more response than a dull echo of both it and the pounding rain—neither of which Ahnu heard very well. 

The hollow formation was certainly unique, and it made Ahnu briefly wonder what could have made it, or who. That line of thinking was immediately dismissed as soon as Ahnu went about seasoning some cleaned poultry to grill over a campfire. They ate and promptly laid down to rest while watching the scarce spots of light from the unseen sunrise dance across the Riola Springs, streaming in through gaps in the dark, dispersing clouds. 

When they woke up in the late evening, it had begun drizzling again, which didn’t faze Ahnu in the slightest. If anything, it was preferable weather for their exploration of the Springs, compared to the expolsive alternative. If there was anything their time in Faron had conditioned in them, it was to check every body of water they came across with Magnesis. 

There was little else about the spring that was particularly astounding, other than the view Ahnu could get of the whole of Floria from it, so they moved on with little else to note. They were solving a Korok tree puzzle on a large but barren plateau when another electrical storm had moved in, as well as their Slate’s sensor picking up on another nearby Shrine—which just so happened to be in the direction of the heart of the storm. 

_Great._

Ahnu sighed, and pulling out their earplugs from the pouch on their belt to securely insert the foam bits into their ear’s cavities, they tugged the rubber helm up over their head. They were grateful that the inside was inlaid with Sheikah-silk, because every time the actual rubber portions of the cap caught on their skin and especially their hair, dry or wet, it’s tacky surface tugged in a terribly uncomfortable manner. 

It was because of how drastically reduced their ability to hear was on account of their precautions, as well as their careful watch of the storm above for pillars of plasma, that Ahnu barely noticed that they’d glided past Kass by about a couple dozen meters. 

Doing a comical double take as they ceased with their forward momentum in the air, not quite sure if they’d seen who they thought they’d seen through the heavy rain, Ahnu gently lowered into the body of water they were passing over instead of the shore. Considering that a pool of conductive liquid wasn’t exactly the best place to be when lightning was touching down all around, Ahnu flailed some in surprise at suddenly being submerged before hurriedly making their way to the shore. After briefly cursing their own lapse in concentration, Ahnu pulled out their Slate to confirm a subtle suspicion of theirs. 

Sure enough, they were at Calora Lake. 

Which, they’d admittedly forgotten about entirely, what with just how much exploration and foraging they’d managed to pack into their short time in Faron’s Floria territory. Ahnu flustered some as they dismissed the pin they placed over the location. 

They sprinted over to Kass in the rain, and judging by how he jumped, he likely didn’t see them because of the dense downpour. Almost immediately though, he started laughing, clearly accustomed to Ahnu’s sudden arrivals and rapid antics. 

“Hah! There you are again, my young friend!” he chuckled warmly, his eyes narrowing in that congenial manner of his. “Very impressive. Not many could make it up here in such rain. I’d expect no less from a well-worn traveler like yourself.” 

‘What?’ Ahnu replied in Hand-Speak. They could see his mouth moving, but between their ear protection and the dull ambience that was the rumble of rain, his voice was received as a hardly registered series of low humming. They couldn’t exactly read his beak, either. They verbally added, probably a bit too loud (which they could feel in the strain of their own voice, so unaccustomed to speaking at high volumes), “I can’t hear you. I have earplugs in.”

“Hm?” Kass hummed in response, feathered brow furrowing some. “Oh!” he then exclaimed, quickly setting his accordion down on the ground, which was relatively dry on account of his location beneath one of the incredibly large tropical trees, which possessed wide and water-repellent leaves that fanned out radially from the top and center of its trunk. Then, surprisingly, he began to sign himself. ‘I suppose you don’t like thunder, do you?’

It was strange, and kind of funny to see a Rito use Hand-Speak. Their large, feathered wings—that only resembled hands when they were occupied with objects—were inherently clumsy looking when trying to gesticulate complex little signals. It was doubly silly for Ahnu, who was very relieved that their rubber helm hid the lot of their face from Kass, to see him in particular exercise the form of communication. It conflicted with their interpretation of him and the air of grace he basically emanated. 

After a moment though, Ahnu quickly sorted the phenomena into a more mundane category of consideration. The way he was signing was still discernible after all, so it was more comperable to a regional accent than anything else. 

“Too loud.” Ahnu agreed, nodding some before they pulled down their cap. Then, reluctantly, they loosened one of their earplugs and signed, ‘Okay, I can hear you now.’ 

“Ah, kind of you.” Kass quipped, dropping his wings to his side. “I’m not sure how passable my own sign is, compared to how well I can interpret it that is.” 

“It’s good.” Ahnu praised, earning another beaming smile from the Rito bard. They watched him as he bent down to retrieve his instrument, a sudden concern falling over them. “Are you okay in the rain? Wouldn’t your accordion’s interior flood?”

The instrument’s frame could rot in the acidic freshwater, and it would rust from the inside, wouldn’t it? It also probably possessed an non-negligible portion of metal outside and in, which made Ahnu wonder if it safe to have out in this electrical storm. Though, now that Ahnu bothered to get a good look at it, the accordion's wood frame didn’t actually appear to be wood up close…

Could it be…?

“Me?” Kass inquired in response, turning back up to them with the instrument in question in hand. “I stay nice and dry. My feathers repel the rain rather well, so worry not.” he assured, holding up his accordion for Ahnu to get an even better look at. “And my instrument was designed to withstand extreme moisture. On top of being incredibly well sealed, the external frame and internal mechanisms aren’t actually made of metal. Their—“

“—Sheikah.” Ahnu interrupted, still inspecting one of the accordion’s faces where Kass’s feathered hand held secure. They pulled off their phrenic bow—the old one—and held it up for comparison. 

“Yes.” Kass confirmed, now looking down at Ahnu with a peculiar, dull glint in his more serious eyes—not to their notice, though. “My master made it for me. He constructed it out of a slightly altered compound of his ancient ancestors typical nonmetal material, using methods Sheikah today rarely use.”

That explanation pulled Ahnu’s attention back in. They looked up at Kass, confusion alight on their face. 

“Why?” they simply asked. 

They didn’t realize it, but that was possibly one of the most loaded questions they could have asked Kass. If Ahnu were any good at interpreting complex expressions, they might have realized his reluctance when his feathered face went through an entire cycle of micro-adjustments, what with him trying to temper how he emoted with just how awkward he felt to answer. 

“Ah, well, that’s…” Kass started, not sure how to course the conversation to his comfort. 

Kass still wasn’t particularly fond of deceit. He never was one to lie, and while that may have always been one of his better virtues, he couldn’t help but feel somewhat cursed by the standard of his own principals at the moment. Then again, every interaction he had with this particular “Hylian” was pressed in a similar manner—what with him always having to construct and enact a careful dance around them and certain subjects. He was fortunate enough that he’d gone so long, and endured so many encounters, without revealing any sort of potentially sensitive information to them. Admittedly, he wasn’t fully aware of the consequences of failing in this regard…

Kass sighed softly, settling on yet another half-truth. 

“I...think you would be better off asking the Sheikah of Kakariko about that, my young friend.” Kass finally responded, after a fair amount of deliberation. “I’m afraid I don’t possess the ability to answer that question to your satisfaction.”

Ahnu’s face twisted oddly at the recommendation, but not out of any particular ill-will towards Kass. It was more out of inner-confliction regarding the topic of that particular village. They were hoping to have gotten the answer they’d wanted, without having to pursue the most obvious and deferred means of acquiring it. Still, they nodded along, trying to not let their disappointment show. 

“Apologies, Ahnu.” Kass reiterated, using their name as he’d only done once before to empathize his sincerity. Switching gears entirely, Kass promptly offered, “How about I make it up to you with a melody? I happen to know a song about this place.” 

* * *

_“When a lost hero calls down lightning from the sky/”_

_“The monk responds from a giant mound on high.”_

Ahnu hadn’t even noticed beforehand that whatever Shrine they were pursuing prior to their encounter with Kass wasn’t anywhere in sight. They’d just figured it to be beyond and below the ridge—not encased in a boulder that required lightning to be blown apart. 

After doing a quick sweep around the mound to confirm with their Slate’s sensor that what laid beneath was the Shrine they were looking for, as well as double-checking that rune bombs couldn’t so much as scratch the surface of the rock mound, they gave in to solving the riddle the way it was meant to be done. Ahnu planted their most disposable metal meapon up atop the rock, in the curious pale divet that ran down the mound in cracked streaks resembling the lightning that followed. They retreated towards Kass to put a safe distance between them and the expected pillar of electricity that struck down soon after—

Revealing none other than a Shrine. 

“Ahah! So there _was_ a Shrine inside that crag split by lightning…” Kass referred, still gazing up at the newly-revealed stupa with a great deal of zeal. “The bolt was so ferocious that I worried I might be struck down myself!”

He looked down to Ahnu, who cast him a confused glance before pointing to their ears and shaking their head. 

“Ah. Of course.” Kass chuckled, mostly to himself. They’d secured their ear plugs in preparation for the Thunder that accompanied the ushered electricity. When Ahnu loosened a plug and gave him a thumbs up to indicate as such, he chuckled a bit more. 

“I was just saying how worthy your efforts are of being immortalized in a song, my friend.” Kass averred, his mirth still pulling at the ends of his beak—even more so when he witnessed Ahnu so clearly flush at the compliment. It was sweet, how modest an individual they were. 

* * *

Again, Kass had remarked that he would be heading somewhere nearby, to find an odd pillar of rock located somewhere in the Kitano Bay area, and again, Ahnu’s Slate lacked the portion of map required to tell them where the hells that was. Somewhere Northeast, to be sure, but that was the only lead they had before Kass bid them farewell with his usual “May the light ever shine on your path.” 

As for the Qukah Nata Shrine, it was a strange one. There was no puzzle inside—just a gift. The Monk _did_ refer to the Shrine as a blessing, which left Ahnu to infer that the real element that required solving was external. As in, the puzzle was the endeavor they had to undergo to call lightning down to the boulder encasing the Shrine. 

_‘Neat.’_ Ahnu thought as they stepped forward to claim the offering. 

They received a set of “Rubber Tights” as their Slate recognized, which only seemed to further prove their theory regarding the nature of their matching rubber helm that they’d received from Cima the Stable-hand. Also pretty neat. 

They spent the rest of the day getting gliding out of the jungle, happy enough to put it and the constant lightning behind them. They wound up at the adjacent Tuft Mountain, grey and green with the overgrown, light colored limestone they were accustomed to as opposed to the red-sandstone flats in Floria. 

Camping out in a spring at the base of the mountain’s peak, Ahnu enjoyed the glow of their fire that added to the luminescence all round them, what with there being small patches of blue nightshade bordering the shore of the waters that dozens of fireflies danced above. They removed their clothing and weapons, as well at their Slate once they pulled some soap and spare cloth out from within it, and waded into the water to bathe while the fish they’d caught in the very same spring cooked.

It was especially nice, with the weather being so warm and the spring so cool. The moonlight that mingled with the bright ambient glow of the luminous ore they camped by was especially beautiful from beneath the warping of the water’s gently undulating surface. 

Ahnu wouldn't mind coming back to the Floria portion of Faron, now that they could bear the terrible weather, but for the time being, they were happy move on from the region. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, auditory overstimulation and sensitivity. I can attest to it being hell. Anyways, I'll be taking a quick break from writing the next chapter to draw up some art to go along with some recent story stuff, and maybe post some future concept stuff on my tumblr! See you next time in a special little fishing village!


	17. Chapter 17--  Love (?) and Lurelin (???)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu meets a particularly interesting individual on their way down the East side of the Tuft Mountain, helps her and some rando Hylian find love, and then continues to book it back down the mountain. where they catch sight of a cute little seaside village.

After waking up late and reaching the peak sometime in the afternoon, Ahnu began scouting from atop Tuft Mountain with the Slate’s scope, their attention drawn predominantly towards the distant cape where a Shrine rested. Trailing down from the cliff's edge, they took note of the massive arced sandbar, and followed along the coastline as it stretched closer and closer to their location. They’d only just caught sight of some strangely adorned palms and what looked to be some beach building when the ridge of Tuft’s lower summit so rudely cut off their view.

Looking down to the level portion of the mountain, they eyed the curious pond below—which appeared to be shaped like a practically perfect heart. Though, what was even more interesting was the presence of what looked to be an individual meandering around the crest of the spring. Given the distance and angle, Ahnu couldn’t see them in great detail and could regard little else of the person, aside from the sheer  _ size  _ of them. 

Up until now, Ahnu hadn’t found many—if  _ any _ —travelers that strayed so far from the established routes of Hyrule, as most preferred to keep the worn roads within the periphery of their sight at the absolute  _ least _ , should they divert at all. Most could navigate Hyrule relatively fine without a map as long as they followed along the old paths, and it was ubiquitously the safest manner of traversing the land—with only the occasional group of Stal-monsters or ambush of easily out-runnable Bokoblins peppering the trails every few kilometers or so. Probabilistically, it made sense that Ahnu would  _ eventually _ encounter fellow vagabonds that were around as hardy as themself, but it still surprised them all the same. They supposed that it was semi-reasonable to find someone on this very summit as opposed to any other, considering that there  _ was _ a mostly deteriorated road that led around and halfway up the mountain.

Gliding down from the peak, Ahnu landed just left of the pond, a fair couple dozen meters away from the—Hylian? No, not that. Something,  _ someone _ else. A very different type of humanoid, Ahnu knew, but still couldn’t quite place. Like how Sheikah and Hylians were to one another, the race of the person before them was to both of the prior. They—no,  _ she _ —was some type of Hyrulean they’d yet to encounter. 

Her skin was a brilliantly dark bronze, and her hair a gorgeous ruby in color that was tied up in a tall ponytail, sitting on the topmost part of her head. She wore a style of clothing Ahnu found themself coveting almost immediately on sight, with a rich royal blue sari draped over her torso that was decoratively hemmed with gold and white cord embroidery, cutting off just below her hips. Flowing out from below the short draped garb was an ornate pair of white sirwal shorts that were similarly embellished with gold silk, which hung loosely up until they ended at the form-fitting elastic-like cuffs that cut off just below the knee. She looked to be wearing what Ahnu could only guess to be a set of strapped flats that meant to match the coloring of her sari, though they looked to be partially elevated around the back-middle of the shoes tread, in a manner that implied that the structure was meant to provide support to the arch of the foot. And of course, she wore just an insane amount of gold—or at least gold coated—jewelry, which was beautifully bejeweled. 

She appeared to be up and about, stretching amongst the small lot of cornflowers near what looked to be a pitched blue-canvas tarp and her drawstring travel backpack that was emblazoned in the same wavy curls and swirls of her clothing. She eventually kneeled down and began rummaging about the flora, hardly paying Ahnu any mind—that is, if she even noticed them at all. 

Regardless of whether or not she happened to notice them, someone else certainly did. 

“H-hey!”

Stifling a flinch, Ahnu spun around immediately in response to the urgent whisper called out behind them, arm whipping up and over their shoulder where their hand lingered over the hilt of their flameblade—earning a yelp from what was evidently a young man. 

They knew, logically, that the being behind them probably wasn’t an enemy of any sort, but it still took them a moment to retract their empty hand. They gazed somewhat apologetically at the Hylian that had called out to them, as he cowered some at the frightening speed of their reflexes. Due to his proximity to the rock face of the mountain, they hadn’t seen him like they had the strange woman. Eventually, the man relaxed, seeming to catch onto the fact that Ahnu had no intention of attacking him. 

“U-uh, sorry? About spooking you I mean.” he apologized, bringing up one of his gloved hands to rove over the closely shaved fuzz of hair on his pate sheepishly. Ahnu gave a quick nod of acceptance, prompting the man to continue on with whatever it was he’d wanted to say. “I’m uh, just…”

The Hylian man looked over to the non-hylian woman who picked through the flowers across the pond, his gaze going similarly ignored. Sighing, he turned back to Ahnu, not quite making eye contact as he lowly stammered out, “I—I’m trying to work up the courage to talk to her, so just… Let me, yeah?”

That was a strange request, especially considering that he was the one to disrupt his own rousing by approaching Ahnu. Still, Ahnu nodded along, much to the satisfied disposition of the nervous man. 

“...Phew.” he sighed again, this time in relief. “I’m so glad! I—I thought you were gonna go up and talk to her before I’d get the chance to!”

Well, they  _ were _ going to do that up until a moment ago, and were still weighing their desire to engage the woman in conversation against the disjointed appeal they’d agreed to. As amenable as they were an individual, and as much as they understood some level of social-anxiety and reluctance, Ahnu wasn’t going to subject themself to the limits of a particularly conversationally-inept Hylian for more time than they deemed reasonable. 

“Oh, by the way, my name is Wabbin!” he introduced himself, waving a hand about in a good-mannered and belated ‘hello.’ “To be honest, I lost my way earlier, taking the South path on the Atun Valley roads instead of continuing East.”

And he wound up climbing the lot of a mountain before realizing this?

“I camped out here all night, and when I opened my eyes in the morning, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen was standing before me, across the pond.” Wabbin relayed, somewhat distractedly as he peered back over the spring. Ahnu did the same, further studying the woman. “At first I thought I was dreaming...or that she was a ghost or something. I mean it’s not everyday you run into a gorgeous woman in the middle nowhere…”

Ahnu couldn’t help but nod in agreement, as the sentiment ran subjectively true and shared between themself and the Hylian man. The woman was fairly beautiful from what they could gleam of her. She was indeed large, though Ahnu still couldn’t determine to just what extent her gigantism reached, what with her so distant and crouched. She also looked particularly sturdy, with broad shoulders and an impressive amount of musculature visible on her exposed biceps. Now  _ she _ was the type of adventurer Ahnu might expect to find out and about, roaming the less-than charted wilds. 

So caught up in their examination of her, Ahnu realized a little too late that they’d mostly tuned out Wabbin’s unwarranted droning about how beautiful she was, and how in love with her he’d fallen—despite his contact with her being limited to staring at her from across a pond for a few hours? It didn’t really make sense to Ahnu, who still was only half listening. They were especially confused when the topic of the conversation shifted over to that regarding the flower species Ahnu themself happened to greatly enjoy—blue nightshade. 

“I want to talk to her, but I don’t have anything worthy of being a gift. If only I had blue nightshade…” Wabbin bemoaned, slouching his upper body and hanging his head in a dramatic rendition of dejection. “Ahh, the smell of it… I can almost imagine it right now. It’s so clear, almost like...it’s…”

He trailed off, sniffing the air a little more feverently. He swiveled around briefly, as if he were trying to track down whatever aroma he’d picked up on, which Ahnu found to look pretty funny. It was less funny when he settled on their direction and started to approach, apparently picking up on whatever scent he was tracing towards them. When he tried to close the distance to smell Ahnu, they stepped back with a splayed palm clearly conveying their rejection of his proximity, keeping him at arms-length. Wabbin didn’t seem to take any offense to the gesture, nor was he self aware enough to wonder if maybe he’d nearly intruded in on someone else’s personal space. 

“Wait,” Wabbin gaped, eyes alight with some vague realization, unbeknownst to a visibly confused (and slightly concerned) Ahnu. “—do you have some blue nightshade on you right now?”

That was a pretty steep jump to what Ahnu though was an entirely disconnected conclusion, considering that they didn’t have any flowers on their person—and there was  _ no way _ that he could smell the ones they had stored away in their Slate. Sniffing the air themself though, they quickly realized that what he must have been smelling was the soap they’d used to bathe the night prior. Of all the soaps they’d bought at Kakariko, the blue nightshade infused ones were still their favorite. 

“Please! If you have one, I need it!” he pleaded, hands clasped together as he shook them imploringly. “It couldn’t be more important!”

Shrugging, Ahnu obliged, and tugged their Slate off of their hip to withdraw one. They handed it to the over-excited man with little fanfare. 

“Thank you!!!” he bleated out, a little too loud for Ahnu’s liking. “This is so perfect! It’s exactly what I needed!”

He immediately swung around, legs moving to take off and march himself around the pond to where the woman foraged amongst the cornflowers, pulling up what looked to be a radish from the ground. At that, Ahnu immediately knelt down to the ground and began to do the same, very interested in procuring an assortment of the hearty root vegetables themself. So caught up in digging through the lush grass and rich, sandy soil around the spring, Ahnu didn’t notice that Wabbin hadn’t moved a centimeter from where he poised himself to depart, until about a minute later, when they pulled up a heart shaped radish of their own. Even then, they really only observed his dithering when he started to murmur something to himself, which prompted Ahnu to stand up and reluctantly tap his shoulder in inquiry. Clearly, something was wrong with him. 

“Ah… I just… Ugh.” Wabbin muttered, turning around to face Ahnu yet again, discouraged by his own hesitancy. They could see how he’d practically wrung the poor stem of the poor blue nightshade in his distress. “When I look at her, my legs freeze up. My throat goes dry. I...I can’t do it.”

Ahnu didn’t find it particularly easy to talk to others a couple months ago either, but they found his neuroticism towards the subject of befriending someone he actually  _ wanted _ to talk to especially ridiculous. The woman across the pond wasn’t  _ that _ imposing to the average Hylian, was she?

“Please, could you take my gift to her?” Wabbin pleaded yet again, eyes  _ actually _ watering. 

“Ehhh…” Ahnu lamented with a shrill groan, feeling very pressed and awkward. They motioned a so-so gesture with their right hand, before reluctantly signing a curt, ‘Sure.’ They had to resist the impulse to add a question mark to their answer. 

“Oh! Thank you!” Wabbin cheered, handing the bell flower back to Ahnu. “And don’t forget to mention it’s a present from ME!” 

Considering that Ahnu was the one to give him the flower in the first place, it annoyed them to hear him emphasize that last part, if only somewhat. At least now they could interact with the woman without earning the insubstantial ire of the flighty Hylian, not that they needed his permission or approval to do so. They gingerly plucked the blue nightshade from his open hands, and started their way round the pond without missing a beat. They did Wabbin the favor of swapping out the flower for one less mangled by his nervous man-handling. 

Approaching her from behind, Ahnu did happen to find themself giving some pause in their proximity, not quite sure how to broach the subject of introduction with such a unique and definitively new type of individual. Back when they’d met Kass, a Rito, or that unfortunately loud prince, a Zora, both parties had endeavored to initiate interaction with Ahnu—not the other way around. Do they just say hello? Greet her like they would any other stranger they felt compelled to conversate with? 

It was honestly a little embarrassing for them to stress over little details so insignificant when they’d been mentally chiding the Hylian man poised on the other side of the pond only a few moments prior. 

“Hello?” Ahnu said aloud, in Hylian-Common, a bit quieter than they meant to utter. 

They weren’t sure what sort of reaction they expected, but for her to swing around rapidly on her haunches wasn’t exactly it. Granted, would anyone have approached Ahnu under similar circumstances, they would have reacted in the exact same way, but they’d long since figured that their behavior was more of an exception to the rule of Hylians. 

But this woman wasn’t a Hylian, was she?

Scanning them up and down, Ahnu did her the due diligence of remaining still, and holding their hands ever-so-slightly aloft from their body with palms partially splayed, enough so to demonstrate that their hands were empty, but not so much as to drop the flower they had on display. Seemingly satisfied with her observations, the woman stood up to her full height, which was an impressive two-plus meters. Up close, she towered over Ahnu, and was built with dense and defined musculature to match, which was even more prominent up close. 

“Good day.” she politely greeted—NOT in Hylian. 

Having never heard it spoken aloud—by anyone other than themself, that is—it took them a solid few seconds to comprehend just what language she’d received them in. Ahnu’s eyes flicked over her form one more time, some absent realization finally forming in the back of their mind. 

Gerudo. She was a Gerudo. 

“Good...day?” Ahnu eventually parroted back, their inflection rising near the end of their reply on account of their lingering confusion. They’d never had to string together a sentence in Gerudo before. “What are you doing here?”

“Wha—what?!” the Gerudo woman stammered out, now in Hylian, eyes blown wide as she looked down at Ahnu. “You… You speak Gerudo?”

Ah. Right. Trilingual. Uncommon. Before Ahnu could even bother to come up with a response to the impending question they wouldn’t have been able to answer honestly—even to themself—the Gerudo managed to come up with her own, much to their relief. 

“Ah… right. You must have been raised by a Gerudo in some manner.” she reasoned aloud, a small smile gracing her brightly painted lips as her expression softened. Switching back to Gerudo, she resumed, “I often forget how common such a thing is. This is my first time out of the desert, so I hope you’ll forgive me.”

_ ‘Desert.’  _ Ahnu thought impassively, turning over the word in their head. Right. The Gerudo hail from the Desert. Less pressed by how awkward the situation was, Ahnu felt inclined to ask her about it, but was cut off mid-thought yet again. 

“It’s refreshing to speak my other language with a Hylian, even one as...uniquely dressed as you.” she added, before her contented expression twisted into one of contemplation, one of her hands lifting for her fingers to lightly brush her mouth. At her reference of their Sheikah garb, Ahnu initially thought she might’ve been curious about how or why they were outfitted in the dubious way they were, only for her to very quickly prove their speculation wrong. “Are you… Could you be the one I am destined to meet?”

“What?” Ahnu dumbly replied. 

“...No.” she replied after a slight pause and some derision, shaking her head and closing her eyes with a sigh. “No, I don’t think so. You’re too young.”

“...What??” Ahnu repeated, even more confused. 

“But then…” She trailed off, not paying much mind to Ahnu as she continued to reflect aloud. “This IS the pond of legend, is it not? The one where a person finds true love?”

“Mnm??” Ahnu noised indiscernibly, completely lost as to what she was talking about. 

“—Yet all I see right now is that strange man on the other side of the pond. Could I be at the wrong one?”

Oh. Wabbin. Ahnu turned to look at him, where he gave them a double thumbs-up. They’d completely forgotten about what they approached the Gerudo for in the first place. 

Wordlessly, they held out the blue nightshade to the Gerudo, completely unaware as to how the gesture might be interpreted. She looked down at the flower, facial feature scrunching some—now it was her turn to be confused. 

“What’s this?” she asked.

“A gift from that guy.” Ahnu answered, pointing across the pond, which the Gerudo followed with a turn of her head. 

Wabbin waved. She didn’t seem particularly impressed.

“I see…” she replied, facing back to Ahnu with a slightly more skeptical look about her. “So… you’re delivering these flowers for that man over there?” 

Ahnu nodded. That also didn’t seem to impress her, if her sigh was anything to go by. 

“Well… I don’t sense any deceit from you…”

It didn’t take much convincing after that for the Gerudo, Perda as she retroactively introduced herself, to storm around the spring, Ahnu in tow for some reason. They supposed that since they’d already gotten involved in… whatever this series of interactions were, they would at least mediate the situation to the end. 

Something they immediately failed to do, as they noticed a metal chest in the waters that caught the light at an odd angle from the corner of their eye, prompting their immediate inspection. 

While the two adults talked about something Ahnu wasn’t particularly invested in, they used Magnesis to collect a lovely, lithe weapon the Slate recognized as a “Throwing Spear.” They were weighing the surprisingly balanced wood and metal shaft when they were brought back into the conversation. 

“Oh, wow! Did you hear that?!” Wabbin exclaimed towards Ahnu, who in fact wasn’t listening at all, making them to turn around from where they knelt down by the pond.

“She said she likes me, and she wants to go out!”

Oh. As in, romantically? Was that what this was about? That made the situation all the more ridiculous in Ahnu’s opinion, and even more so that they hadn’t paid enough attention to pick up on that fact any sooner. 

Still, Ahnu gave him a thumbs up. 

* * *

“So I meant to head down to this little fishing village Hateno trades for exotic sea creatures and coastline fruits with—the stuff’s real tasty—“ Wabbin recounted, mostly to Perda, who listened avidly, clearly captivated by the tale as he continued, “and I ended up taking a wrong turn, leading me up the mountain!”

“Hah! Truly, it must have been fate!” Perda laughed, tossing back her head and slapping her own thigh. “You stumbled onto the mountain without a clue!”

“Hehe…” Wabbin giggled along, stirring the stew that Ahnu provided the meat for, and Perda the radishes and spices. “But I sure am happy I did. After all, I found you~”

“Oh?” Perda quirked her brows at the declaration, before she narrowed her eyes suggestively and added in a slightly lowered voice, “And am I ever fortunate in kind~”

Ahnu, who was mostly an afterthought in the conversation, cringed just a little. After nearly an hour of hanging around the fire and pot Wabbin had set up, sitting through the non-stop cooing the new couple kept slewing at one another, they were fairly nauseated by the sheer amount of unfounded familiarity and intimacy the two practically radiated, unabashedly. They’d already agreed to join them in a late lunch though, so they tapped and swiped away at their Slate furiously, trying very hard to ignore the lovebirds while they reviewed their inventory for the upteenth time. 

Ideally, they would have conversed more, with Perda specifically, as they were incredibly curious about any and all things related to the Gerudo. Granted, they weren’t sure just what specifically they would inquire about, considering that with the expanse of their wonder encompassing practically everything relating to her race, they would have come up short on limiting themself to even a single topic. Not that any decisiveness on their part would help, considering how enamored and focused Perda was on Wabbin. 

When the food was cooked to the satisfaction of the trio (rather, the duo and their third-wheel), Ahnu found it rather fortunate that the Gerudo and Hylian favored busying their mouths with eating as opposed to flirting, cutting short the awkward courting they were being subjected to. Safe to say, Ahnu ate their share of the meal  _ very _ quickly.

If there was at least one interesting thing they noticed about the Gerudo that they hadn’t before, as they eyed her across the fire while she ate, it was that her canines were particularly big. Not quite twice as long as her front teeth, but prominent and impossible to ignore all the same. 

Ahnu absently flicked their tongue over one of their own fangs in response to the observation—only to find it longer and sharper than any of their other teeth. 

_ ‘Neat.’ _ Ahnu thought, turning their attention back to their last bit of stew and bread, before downing it all. Truly, it was fascinating that even now, there were still little surprises they could discover about themself. 

Done with their food, Ahnu hurried to clean and pack away their own dishes and cutlery into the Slate, dithering to depart only on account of them reaffixing their arm guards and redoing their hair bun. Done with that, they hastily bid the couple farewell with a bow, and made to turn away, intent on making their way down the East side of Tuft Mountain. 

“Ah—Ah! Wait!” Perda called after them, sumbling to her own feet after hastily setting down her food next to the smoldering fire. She quickly put a fair amount of distance between herself and it (as well as an unbothered Wabbin, who continued to eat away), as she approached Ahnu, a small, dark-green, drawstring bag in hand. 

“I just wanted to thank you.” she told them as she closed in, stopping a rather large arm length away from them, holding out her layered silk ingredients bag. “I hope you have as much luck finding someone as I did…” 

It was a quick show of gratitude, and one that she emphasized by gifting them some of the hearty radishes she’d dug up earlier. Ahnu appreciated the gesture enough to not comment on how strange the blessing for companionship was, since it wasn’t something they were at all interested in. 

Still, the bag was nice—they especially liked the color—and the vegetables were fresh, so it was a more than acceptable offering in their eyes. 

* * *

Racing down the East side of the Tuft Mountain, Ahnu immediately threw and subsequently broke the throwing spear they’d only just acquired an hour or so prior, and on the head of a buffalo they’d been chasing, off all things. They hadn’t expected it to be quite  _ that _ fragile.

So caught up in flaying and butchering the downed game, they hadn’t even bothered to look down the edge of the rocky ridge only a couple of meters away until they properly buried the bones and remains of the corpse so that it could better decompose. By the time they’d cleaned their hands and adorned the gloves and arm guards of their stealth gear, which they’d removed to maintain some level of sanitation about them, they’d been more focused on the ocean’s South horizon than whatever lied further East. 

It was just as beautiful a sight as it was back before they’d entered the Floria region, with the same golden light of the setting sun dancing across the surface. It was admittedly harder to see, what with the blur of the evening’s humidity propagating a slight fog around the mountain.

That’s why Ahnu had to do a double-take when they turned left. They hardly noticed the village that rested down below the base of the neighboring Tuft Mountain. 

Several of what looked to be wooden huts built around palm trees with clay and straw thatched roofs were littered about the seaside settlement, encompassed at every angle that didn’t face the ocean by steep cliffs, with a series of yet more palms that appeared to have awnings installed around them dispersed all over. The buildings crested around a bay, with a particularly thin inlet that bottlenecked the feed of ocean water, making the entirety of the harbor a sort of trap for fish and other sea creatures. There were several docks built over and into the waters, where medium sized storage and short-voyage fishing boats were parked and secured—along which Ahnu could barely make out the specks of bustling towns folk going about their business. They spotted the odd and incredibly massive boat or two as well, beached a fair distance out of and away from the waters, which appeared to have been converted into yet more homesteads, or possibly hubs of a sort. 

They hadn’t realized that it was so  _ close. _

And now that they were here, they  _ did _ realize that Wabbin hadn’t mentioned the name of it. They might have heard it’s name in passing once or twice, like they had Hateno’s, but they weren’t sure just how many Hylian settlements there were, nor were they confident in their ability to identify which one was which on just sight alone. 

Peering down, Ahnu squinted some at the sight of the nestled village below, before closing their eyes altogether. Knowledge, facts, and generally anything else certain or objective usually came to them with little obstruction in their unsteady flow of thought. They tried to focus—to stir up something amongst the murky waters of their mind—because, if they really tried, then  _ maybe— _

_ “Lurelin.” he murmured. _

He sounded far away, like he spoke from the back of their mind, or under the water of the waves that lapped at the shore of the settlement below—much like the soft rolling of their incoming migraine, which began as a soft pulsing ache that grew more irritating at every pass. They hadn’t necessarily wanted a (in)direct response from the somewhat detached entities that meandered about the fragmented landscape that was their consciousness, but they also weren't unexpecting of the outcome—at least, they weren’t as surprised by the lumination itself as they were the source.

They were expecting the voice of the Academic. What— _ who _ —they got was the Archer. 

Ahnu opened their eyes, and blinked the blurry spots forming around their periphery out of their field of vision. They looked down over the distant ocean village again, as a small group of seagulls passed overhead to collectively dive down to the bay. It looked so small, from up where they were perched on a mid-ridge of Tuft. So serene. 

_ ‘Lurelin.’ _ Ahnu repeated in their head, abstractedly and maybe also aloud. 

_ ‘Home.’ Elle whispered, so, so softly.  _

Ahnu tried to ignore that last part, as futile an effort they knew it to be. 

* * *

“C’mon, old man.” Numar urged, gently patting the elder on the back as he ushered his uncle back home. The moniker wasn’t without affection, or genuine concern. “Let’s get you inside for the night, yeah?”

He was particularly worried for the village elder, especially after how rough the last three months have been on the poor man. 

“Hah…” Rozel wheezed out a laugh, more so exasperated by the excessive caution and protectiveness of his sweet, but unrelenting nephew, then exhausted by his walk around the harbor. “I can make it home on my own, Mari. Don’t worry about this old man.”

“Yeah, I know…” Numar assured, only half skeptical. He knew Rozel wasn’t frail, and that his elder certainly didn’t like being treated as if he were. “But…”

“No buts.” Rozel turned slightly from where he hobbled along the sand. “Home’s a hop, skip, and a jump away. I can make it up the stairs on my own. You head back to the docks and finish up inventory with Sebasto and Armes, you hear?”

“Hmn.” Numar noised, uneasy but also unwilling to deny his uncle such a simple request. “Aye, old man.” he agreed, nodding, before adding, “—But be careful, and don’t trip or anything, alright? Send Daisy for me if you need anything, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Rozel waved him off and away, shooing Numar towards the commerce docks with a smile. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry none.”

As Numar turned to leave, Rozel set off for the leftmost staircase that led up to the wood patio out in front of his wood hut. A blonde Hylian retriever, previously napping atop the wood deck, perked her head up at the creak and scrape of Rozel ascending the sandy stairs. She hopped up from her spot, bounding over to her master with a wagging tail and lolling tongue. 

“Hah ha. Hey there Daisy.” Rozel greeted his dog, patting her pate and scratching her behind the ears as she panted contentedly. “Good girl. Let’s go to bed, yeah?”

Yipping softly and quietly, as she’d been raised to do since she was a puppy, the sweet mannered dog walked alongside her Hylian as the elder trudged along towards the entrance of his home. Daisy closed in next to his legs as the two made it up the hut’s stairs, loyally offering support to the old Rozel, who accepted the offer and placed a stern hand on her back as he usually did. A nightly ritual for the two. 

Another ritual—a new one, that Rozel’s only kept up for a quarter-year now—halted the elder at the door frame of his home, while Daisy wandered off from under his hand and padded over to her bed indoors. 

Standing in the doorway, Rozel turned some to the right, gently craning his head back to peer up at the lowest cliff that overlooked the seaside village. Expecting the same scene he’d become so uncomfortably familiar with in the last hundred days or so (had it really been that long?), he didn't give the sight of the Shrine too much thought as he turned back and paced into the foyer.

Though, after only a step or two, he halted abruptly, bushy eyebrows raising high as he stared through the palm tree trunk that served as the support post of his and his nephew’s shared home, his dog staring at him with a curious quirk of her head. Turning around, faster than he’d been in years, Rozel scrambled back out of his hut, Daisy up again from her pillow and following along. Doing a double take, Rozel gripped the doorframe tightly, having to take deep breaths to calm his nerves as he cranked his head back up to decry the old Shrine, eyes wide and unbelieving (and glassy).

Where he expected to find the amber glow of the  _ eye _ , looking down upon Lurelin with a fiery and desolate gaze—he instead saw  _ blue. _

He stayed there, one hand tense on the carved wood of his home’s doorway, the other resting as relaxed as he could manage on Daisy’s head while she leaned against him, ready to help him down the stairs if need be. 

He just stood there, incredulous. He couldn’t believe it. 

_ ‘They’re here.’  _ he thought, awe and dread flooding his head. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo! This is a pretty short chapter, I know, but I concluded it where I saw fit best to do so. And yes, I changed up Perda's outfit, and will continue to diversify Gerudo outfits in the future. If Hylians get to wear a wide range of differing garb, than so do the Gerudo. Sue me. Anyways, neat, that thing at the end with Rozel, ain't it? See where that leads in the next chapter! Thanks for reading!


	18. Chapter 18--  Outsider to the Ocean Village

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu spends a confused and somewhat uncomfortable day in Lurelin, despite how lovely a settlement it is.

Despite their initial misgivings, the beds in Lurelin were actually surprisingly comfortable!

Ahnu was skeptical of just how inviting a comforter draped over a form carved wood pallet could be the night prior, when they booked it straight from the Shrine through the seaside settlement, ducking into the first non-private building they spotted, the sign above the entrance that read “Hotel—Fishing Resort” beckoning them inside. Though with a little assurance from the innkeeper, a sweet woman with brilliantly blue eyes named Chessica, They saw fit to rent out one of the softer “beds,” which only amounted to a fluffier comforter being stacked on top of the regular ones provided to guests.

Very much so worth the extra 20 rupees. 

After a bit of stretching, Ahnu donned their Sheikah gear and weapons, eager to explore the village they saw so little of in their brief escapade through the sandy streets the night before. Upon departing from the hotel, they immediately went about inspecting the exterior of the structure, which was one of the few odd buildings they’d spotted back on Tuft to appear as if it were a ship of some sort. 

After sleeping inside of one of them for the night, examining the inner-framework and admiring the central support beam that was a trio of closely grown and tightly twisted palm tree trunks, they found that the exterior of the construction hinted at nothing else that would definitively determine whether the inn truly was sculpted out of what used to be a boat, or if the appearance was merely a thematic design choice. Considering that from what little they’ve heard and seen of Lurelin thus far, all of which having to do with fish, the latter wasn’t too much of a stretch. Still, they saw fit to round the perimeter of the hotel, to admire the craftsmanship and finer details of the architecture and its various colorful banners, if nothing else. Their eyes followed along the large red bunting that hung on either side of the ship, stopping around the recesses where the blinded windows were, a few planters bearing bushels of pink hibiscus resting in their sills, where hummingbirds flitted about. The crimson flags bore simplistic, chalk-painted swirls. 

Those felt...familiar, somehow. 

Pacing around to the left side of the boat-inn, they noticed that the wood blinds also bore a painted symbol of sorts, being some sort of almost completed circle, or perhaps a horseshoe? As they were considering the implications, if any, behind the rounded iconography, their vision trailed off and up, between where the double-windows were separated by some of the hotel’s framework. Some sort of extraneous crest looking feature sat proudly atop the dividing beam, like a crown, carved simply with petal-like design, and—

—and a raised, red stained, tailed swirl.

Ah. So _that’s_ why the decorative bunting was so familiar.

Ahnu felt an onrush of conspiratorial adrenaline, head darting around to scope out the entirety of the sleepy fishing village as if they’d caught on to something they shouldn’t have. They felt silly for being so excited after only a moment or two though, when their mind caught up to their baseless excitement. 

As boring (and maybe a tad disappointing) as it was, Ahnu quickly reasoned that the symbol was likely only borrowed by the people of Lurelin—recycled into another abstract design element that had less of a place here than the voyage symbolism. It wasn’t too long ago that they’d been told about the Zonai people, so they happened to remember all too accurately that the living culture of the ancient tribe was most certainly dead. As in, thousands of years dead. The people themselves are said to have disappeared—as vague as that is. 

Even if those recorded rumors were all but false, wouldn’t someone else have noticed by now? They weren’t sure just how old Lurelin was (or really, any place in Hyrule for that matter), but it had to have existed for a few centuries, at the very least—and a few millennia, at the most. Wouldn’t someone else have caught on by now? Perhaps one of the errant travelers that the village seems to so hospitably welcome, if Ahnu’s first night was anything to go by, or maybe literally anyone from the village of Hateno, seeing how the two settlements engage in close business relations. Hells, they’d seen a few Hylians meandering about this morning, a couple of which were dressed in what looked to be local garb. There was no way that _someone_ hadn’t conducted a thorough investigation at _some_ point in the past. 

With how absolutely impossible it would have been for Ahnu to be the first person to notice something so blatantly obvious if true, the only likely answer to this enigma was that it wasn’t. 

Ahnu sighed, and went on about their business in the village.

* * *

Unable to leave well enough alone, Ahnu immediately went about inspecting the nearest other boat-building, which bore a sign that read “Chance—All or Nothing” above the entrance, with decorative wood carvings that resembled rupees embellishing it like a tiara. 

The vessel was of a different overall design than the Hotel’s, but its style was clearly still meant to emulate that of a ship. The banners, bunting, window blinds, planters and flowers and hummingbirds—all of it was identical to that of the Inn.

Right down to the inclusion of the Zonai symbols, yet _again,_ which were featured on either side of it. 

So _Strange._

Even stranger was the man peeking through the blinds at them, as they’d paced around the building for the fifth time—though, after a bit of thought, Ahnu had to consider that _they_ might’ve been the strange one. Catching his eyes, Ahnu immediately averted their own and quickly turned around, intent on making a shameful retreat over into some other portion of the settlement. Their attempt was interrupted by the same man calling out to them. 

“Hey, you there!” the bald man hollered out to them, pulling the blinds all the way up with a rough yank of the vanes. 

Ahnu stilled, stiff as a board, before slowly turning around. Somewhat dumbly, they raised a single hand up to their chest, pointing at themself as if to ask, _‘Me?’_

“Yeah, you!” the older-looking man affirmed, rolling his eyes.

 _‘Hells._ ’ Ahnu thought. That was the one answer they didn’t want to hear. 

“C’mere!” he called, a little quieter now that he had Ahnu’s attention, beckoning them with a hand. “Come inside!”

Ahnu wasn’t quite sure why he’d invited them indoors, and even less so as to why they even complied, reluctantly trudging through the sand and around the building to its front steps. They half expected him to chastise them for behavior that probably wasn’t ‘appropriate,’ as they’d been stalking about what they could only assume to be his home or business. But, when they’d passed through the door-less threshold of the ship, where rupee decorated bunting greeted them, he was already sitting down across the expansive interior—amongst some bottles of what looked to be liquor, no less. They wrinkled their nose at the smell of the alcohol that radiated off of the man.

Ahnu paid little attention to the obvious warning signs littered about the situation, instead favoring to examine the intentionally prominent staging in the back of the room, where three chests with identical banners behind each—all brandishing a rupee above the phrase “Get Lucky” and a litany of extraneous text—sat in an even row against the wall. They were starting to get the feeling that this man liked rupees. 

“Hey, kid.” the man grunted out, regaining Ahnu’s attention. “Over here, closer.”

Ahnu just started at him.

When it was clear that they were unwilling to close the distance of the few meters between the two, the sleazy man just shrugged, and seemed to settle on speaking up at a medium level of volume. 

“So…” he began, relaxing from his formerly cross-legged position into a more laid back, casual manner of sitting, supporting most of his weight on a single arm placed in the floor behind him. His relative comfort didn’t exactly put Ahnu at ease, but it’s not as though they viewed him as much of a threat anyhow, despite how off-putting an aura he gave off. “How’d you like to be rich...without having to work for it?”

Ahnu shrugged noncommittally. 

Money wasn’t something they thought about too much—unlike the man in front of them, clearly. His eyes practically bugged out at their neutral response. 

“Good grief…” the older man bemoaned, tossing his head back and slapping his free hand to his forehead. “Simmer down there kiddo, no need to get too excited.” he added sarcastically, little to Ahnu’s knowledge. 

‘I’m not excited at all.’ Ahnu cluelessly signed in response, which earned a groan from the man. Now that they could get a good look at him, they noticed that he also had cerulean eyes, much like the inn-keep, though his were more beady and bloodshot. Not a good look. 

“Figure of speech.” he soon waved off, getting over his bafflement and evident frustration to resume whatever it was he was pitching to Ahnu. He pointed to the back wall of the ship. “See those treasure chests over there? Whaddaya say to a little wager on ‘em?”

Ahnu tilted their head at him, not quite catching on—and frankly, they weren’t interested enough to pay him much attention at all. 

As he continued on about some game (that sounded suspiciously similar to the concept of gambling), their eyes drifted from his gesturing hand, to his face, and then off behind him, where something— _many_ somethings—far more captivating than whatever he was talking about caught their attention. Having been far too focused on acquiescing the call of the mildly inebriated Hylian on the floor, and the pointedly displayed set of chests in the back, they hadn’t paid much mind to what lined either side of the building’s interior walls—likely on account of an assortment of banners and basket-weaved boxes, as well as the general disarray, muddling the setting into a sort of visual white-noise that blended into everything else.

How else could they have missed shelves overflowing with books? Stacks of them were sitting haphazardly atop and in front of the packed rows, the wicker boxes that crowded the walkway of the ship also appearing to hold several dozen more each, if the few open ones that displayed their messily stuffed contents of leather and parchment were anything to go by—just hundreds of books. They’d yet to see so many in a single location. 

Stables only occasionally provided reading material to visitors, and they’d outright refused to visit the public library in the townhouse at Kakariko—for reasons obvious, but also because only citizens were allowed inside. Honestly, they’d thought the few dozen books provided at the Seaside hotel to be fairly impressive compared to what lack of literacy they’d been exposed to thus far. Could this place be Lurelin’s library?

“So, Whaddaya say?” the man asked, interrupting Ahnu’s line of thought. “All you’ve got to lose is your pride...and your money.”

Ahnu, who hadn’t bothered to retain any of what he was going on about, even before they’d stopped paying attention altogether, was completely indifferent towards his scheme. They shook their head, curtly signing, ‘No thank you.’

“Psh…” he noised in response, a quick and dissatisfied exhale escaping from behind his teeth to signal his annoyance. His already sour looking face twisted to look just a bit more put-off at their refusal. “Lady Luck has no time for someone who won’t take any chances.”

Ahnu heard the creak of floorboards behind them, the slight vibrations from someone’s slow approach creeping up their heel. The man’s eyes flicked over to Ahnu’s side, his annoyed expression shifting into one of exasperation as he caught sight of whoever it was entering the domain.

“—And Queen Karma looks down on the drunkard that tries to solicit the underage into gambling, eh Cloyne?”

Ahnu turned around at hearing the somewhat mirthful, somewhat stern warning of what appeared to be a very old man, who’d only just made his way to the top of the stairs. The hair on his head and face was ragged and near-white with age, and a pair of bushy and low set eyebrows partially obscured his playfully narrowed, beautifully azure eyes. He held his hands behind his slightly slouched back, as he hobbled forward into the foyer. 

“Ugh…” Cloyne groaned, sitting up straighter. “Didn’t exactly ask their age, Rozel.”

“Huh, really now? And that gives you a free pass to pester a hapless traveler?” the elder chided, settling besides Ahnu, turning to look them up and down, studying their partially masked face in particular. “Besides, just look at them. The youth doesn’t look much older than...hm, 17, I’d say.”

Was that how old they looked? The old man said it without much indecision, implying that he was relatively sure of himself. Most other travelers they’d met tended to refer to them as ‘young,’ but not to the point that there was much concern invested into whether or not it was safe for someone their age to be out adventuring alone. 

“Well, how‘m I supposed to know that, huh?” Cloyne sneered back, though with little bite, as he’d since averted his eyes from the direction of the old man, too busy attempting to sort through and scour the surrounding bottles of liquor for one that wasn’t empty. “Not like I’ve got that age-acquired wisdom that you do, ey?”

...But wasn’t he calling Ahnu kid just a few moments prior? Was he just being condescending then? Or was he lying now?

“Oh, learn some decency, Cloyne.” Rozel reprimanded further. “You're lucky I still let you manage this place after what you’ve gone and done to it. I mean—“ He gently tapped one of the _many_ stray books just sitting around on the floor with his foot, “—just look at this place! The library’s a mess! Whatever happened to that ‘reorganizing’ you said you were doing?”

So it _was_ the library! Though, in an evident state of disrepair… And frankly, Ahnu couldn’t say that they really liked the librarian all that much. 

“I’m getting around to it…” Cloyne mumbled, popping the cork out of what appeared to be a bottle only half-empty. He downed the rest of the alcohol in seconds. 

“Hah, sure you are.” Rozel remarked, voice sarcastically dry. He tilted his head back over to Ahnu. “Sorry about him, traveler. I hope he hasn’t hasn’t been a hassle to such an esteemed guest.”

At that, two sets of addled eyes rested upon the village elder. One on account of general inebriation, and the other due to genuine confusion—maybe also reluctance. Maybe also _fear—_ because _how_ could he know? He couldn’t, right? _Was_ he that old? _Did he know?_

Ahnu’s mind was instantly alight with all sorts of worries they’d only just managed to keep buried, constantly having to kick more and more layers of obfuscation and denial over the exhumed legacy that was their own, as it always seemed to have a habit of digging itself up to the surface of a grave Ahnu would have been plenty content to ignore altogether. Was it the Slate? They should have just gone back to hiding it altogether, instead of risking everything for the sake of convenience. Was it their face? Was the partial cover of their Sheikah mask not enough? 

Still, it seemed to be enough to conceal their dismay, as their face became uncannily stoic beneath it—like some intense feedback loop rendered them unable to emote properly. Rozel’s kind-natured, unassuming gaze weighted on them far more heavily than he could have known. 

With Ahnu frozen, a whirlwind of rapid-paced thought assuaging them, Cloyne was in a better shape, comparatively, to ask the obvious. 

“What’re you on about, old man?” he inquired, eyes narrowed in a mild, but ultimately uninvested suspicion. Thankfully the question diverted his pressing attention from Ahnu. 

“Psh. No manners or mind on you, huh?” Rozel ragged on the inefficient librarian. “Look at them a bit closer, you ninny!”

Oh no. 

The attention of both men was on Ahnu, skeptical and contemplative in their leering.

Oh _no._

Rozel brought up an empty hand from where it was clasped behind his back, to splay openly upwards and excitedly as if the gesture were to introduce Ahnu—though it only made them feel more like a spectacle. Still, their expression was neutral, and their jaw clenched. 

“We have yet another Sheikah in the village!”

 _Oh n_ —wait.

What? 

* * *

Ahnu trudged alongside the elder, Rozel, as he led them across the village, to his home. They had to slow their normal pace substantially, so as to not pass him. 

It was a relatively silent walk, with Rozel only occasionally slowing even further to greet another resident of Lurelin by name, and Ahnu still too uneasy to speak up—hands fisted too tightly at their sides to even sign. The distress from their own downward metal spiral still lingered in silent and compliant discomfort, regardless of however brief it was. The village elder insisted on a proper introduction between the two, inviting them down to his hut to share some tea. As hospitable and good-natured his intent had to be, there was a part of Ahnu that just couldn’t trust it. 

Despite this, they felt compelled to offer him assistance as the two made it to the porch out in front of his home, where he appeared to struggle up the stairs. 

“Ah, kind of you.” Rozel remarked, taking the arm they offered without further thought. He acted so...familiar with them? Though, he hasn’t overstepped any of their boundaries. Yet. 

A golden colored dog, with eyes as blue as her master’s (and every other native villager’s here, it seemed), bounded out from under the raised foundations of the hut, alerted to the sound of people on the approach. She slowed upon nearing her frail old Hylian and his visitor, untimid in her introduction, and sniffed at Ahnu curiously. Were they in a better mood, they most certainly wouldn’t have hesitated in asking to pet her. 

“Daisy! There you are, lazy girl.” Rozel affectionately chided, rubbing a hand behind her ears. “Sleeping under the hut, huh? Well our guest here had to do your job and help me up the stairs. Take me inside, will you?”

Initially, Ahnu thought the request was made towards themself. They were immediately proven wrong though, when the elder detached himself from their side, and switched to supporting himself on his dog. They were mildly impressed to see the clearly well-trained dog keep pace with her master, and easily shoulder his weight to get him up the stairs of his elevated home, offering aid in lieu of railing. 

“Here we are.” Rozel remarked, taking a hand off of his dog, who made her way to the pillow in the back of the room, eager to continue her nap. He gestured to the stool in the middle of the room, which was one of two seated around the central pillar that was yet another palm tree, draped in a wrap of bunting just like every other building in the settlement. That white swirl on a red flag was everywhere. “You can sit there while I get the fire going, yeah?”

Ahnu complied wordlessly, and watched as he’d effortlessly sparked a fire over some hay kindling in the hearth with some old flint and steel lighter. As the fire grew, Rozel went about grinding some tea, grabbing little bits of herb and spice from a few of the many capped jars that lined the shelves besides his desk. He paused only to set a bronze kettle up on the iron burner on his oven, returning to grinding a particularly sweet and fragrant smelling flower into the mixture in his mortar—something Ahnu could have sworn was dried blue nightshade, before the scents of other dried plants and the general balmy air of the seaside that permeated the village drowned it out. 

Looking around the space of Rozel’s hut, Ahnu couldn’t help but take in just how homey it was. Banners and tapestries hung among the framework, along with some dried palm fruit and wall mounted harpoons. Below their feet was a circular mat, woven around the palm pillar, and decorated with print-dyed fish and other miscellaneous designs. In addition to the food stores and herb on the free hanging shelves, there was grain and other supplies kept in wicker-boxes and pots, with a large stock of freshwater kept in the clear glazed, red clay jugs that were only embellished by a wavy strip of white shellac. It was just like the pale wood stain that snaked itself all around the interior of the hut.

The simplistic, winding design must have been emblematic of the fishing village, like the Eye was of the Sheikah. Speaking of which—

“I’m not Sheikah.” Ahnu blurted out—in Sheikah. 

The sound of the grinding pestle stopped.

Now _that_ was a blunder worthy of the visible wince on their face, as their hand clenched at the tights on their knees. Evidently, they’d gotten too comfortable in the open-aired confines of the elder’s home. Enough so that their mouth lacked all restraint when vacating the contents of their mind. Their face twisted even further as Rozel turned some, peeking over his shoulder at them with furrowed brows—legitimately confused and perhaps a bit astounded. 

“...Pardon?” he asked, after a couple beats.

“Ah—I, ‘mm not—“ Ahnu sputtered, now in Hylian, but struggling greatly. Their hands waved about uselessly, never quite picking up on what words they could sign to convey what they needed to. Eventually they settled on pointing to their chest, where the red ‘Eye’ plastered on the lot of their abdomen held a sturdier gaze than either of their own. 

“You…” Rozel started, placing his pestle down in the mortar, and turning to face them fully. “You’re not…?”

‘Sheikah’ Ahnu finished in Hand-Speak, still refusing to look at him directly. The only reason he’d invited them into his home was because he thought they were, right? ‘I’m not Sheikah.’

“Wha—but!” the elder began to protest, almost incredulous at the mere suggestion against his assumption. “—But aren’t you—you’re—!” He was pointing at them now, looking them up and down, as if trying to identify something. “You’re supposed to be—!?“ 

But he couldn't quite say whatever it was that he meant to, as if the word or words evaded him, now. His near-panic was incredibly concerning to Ahnu, who stood up with their hands splayed out before them in a placating manner. Regardless of how unhelpful their change in stance was, Rozel’s strained disbelief morphed into a less frazzled show of suspicion, which was calm enough to temper Ahnu’s own worries. They did NOT want to be the reason their host has a heart-attack in his own home. 

“Oh...okay.” Rozel leveled, breathing in deeply before continuing. He was done with assumptions now, it seemed. “Who are you?” He finally asked, before floundering briefly at just how imposing a tone he’d taken in his inquiry, quickly and somewhat awkwardly adding, “—If, uh, you don’t mind this old man asking such a thing, that is.”

Normally, that was a question Ahnu _would_ have minded, coming from literally anyone with some implicit association to anything relating to the past. In clueless fashion though, they were completely unaware of whatever covert significance Rozel was trying to decode from their behavior and imminent answer. 

“I’m an adventurer.” they replied. “My name is—“

Had they ever said their own name aloud before?

“Ahnu.” they finished, after only a slight pause. 

At that, Rozel’s expression became even more curious. Even more charged. Something strange simmered in the waters of his eyes, beyond just a cross skepticism. Recognition warred with dubiety. He was almost equally reluctant to ask the following question. 

“And you’re...just an adventurer? Nothing else?”

That… was a loaded enough inquiry that even someone as dense as Ahnu could see it for how strange it was. What answer could he have possibly been expecting? It made them shift uncomfortably where they stood, which didn’t go unnoticed. 

“Ah—I, uhm—” Rozel stammered yet again, catching himself and his burdensome queries a little too late. “It’s just that, you’re, err…” he trailed off, evidently unsure about where to take the conversation—how to divert focus. He settled on the obvious. “You’re… dressed as a Sheikah?”

“Oh!” Ahnu exclaimed aloud, more content to have been ushered into a topic they could handle, and one they’d expected beforehand. “Kakariko!” they replied, vocally, and a bit too enthusiastically, before settling down and adding, “I bought them at Kakariko.”

“Oh.” Rozel still seemed unconvinced. “They just sell that gear to anybody, now, do they?”

Ahnu nodded. 

They never really stopped to consider just how strange their attire was, with the offhanded references other folks made towards the topic always dissolving into something else—likely on account of those strangers drawing conclusions of their own, like Rozel, or being ultimately uninterested in furthering the subject in lieu of more pressing matters. They knew there were Sheikah that didn’t exactly look as most would expect members of the shadow tribe to appear, so the controversy didn’t surprise them nearly as much as the inverse. With how quickly they’d taken to their stealth gear, and how entirely they’d worn it, and _only_ it since obtaining the garb, how hadn’t a single person questioned their suspicious getup until now? 

Were the Sheikah just not that much of an enigma to the average person? Perhaps this was a relatively obvious consequence of how ubiquitous their collective legacy was in Hyrule. 

“And…” he hesitated, looking them up and down for the upteenth time. “You speak Sheikah, because…?”

Well, now, that was a kicker, wasn’t it? Of all the questions he could ask them, he had to go and pick at one of the many subjects they were utterly incapable of rationalizing, even to themself. And their mouth, damn the orifice, just so happened to feel compelled to charge ahead, offering up the simple truth before their mind could fully evaluate the situation and work to remove them from the corner they’d been backed into. 

“I don’t know.” Ahnu blurted out, cringing internally almost immediately after processing their own brash, witlessness. They wanted to pull their scarf up over their face and walk right out of the hut right then and there. 

“You don’t…know?” Rozel asked, incredulity seeping back into his voice, which rose an octave at the strange inflection. “What? Did you just wake up one day, speaking Sheikah?”

“Yes.” Ahnu responded. 

**_‘Stop.’_ ** Ahnu thought, to themself specifically. _‘Why would you say that?’_

Yes, it was the most truthful and literal answer, but it was also most obviously the _worst_ possible thing they could have said. Rozel must have thought they were _mad._

His expression wasn’t as bewildered as they’d expected, though. As the elder eyed them, some subtle realization was forming behind his brilliantly blue irises. His face underwent countless minute shifts, wrinkles undulating like the waves of the waters besides his village, all of which was ultimately imperceptible. Absent recognition melded into latent resignation—not that Ahnu could notice the shift. 

“You woke up…” he mumbled, bringing a hand up to tug at his beard. He was looking off to the side now, out the doorway at something unspecific amongst the sand and greenery. A liquid feeder, filled with a transparent, if slightly cloudy concoction, hung just beyond the blinds that served as the huts door. All manner of colorful hummingbirds and butterflies fluttered about it. 

Ahnu was embarrassed now, and even a bit ashamed. Of course it was unbelievable—that was a given—but it really was pathetic that they had no better answer, wasn’t it? Pitiful even, the entirety of their miserable situation, seeing how some unspecified tragedy that befell them nearly a century ago had rendered them so completely lost as to each and every facet of their identity. 

Everything they knew, they couldn’t source. Whoever they were, they didn’t know. They were trapped in a vicious cycle that offered more loose ends the further they traced their line of thought. 

It was a reality that they would never be fully accustomed to. One that they still hadn’t fully processed, assisted partially by their own vehement reluctance to acclimate—to accept. Even if they were prepared—capable—of reconciling their lot in their new-life, none of it would even matter. 

Not if they couldn’t remember their old life. 

They were looking down at the ground now, teeth grinding and fists clenched. Their throat and chest felt tight as they usually did when Ahnu was upset, and their eyes stung despite being dry. Their face was expressionless, though.

No furrowed brows. No narrowed eyes. No scrunched up nose, or taunt lips. Nothing. Placid. Relaxed, as much as it juxtaposed how they felt—perhaps forcibly so. Just another unconscious habit they’d regained. A response to stress they didn’t know they had, up until now. Their breathing came out even and deep, but hollow.

“Mhm. Alright.” 

Rozel’s words cut through their dense discontent like a knife, jarring them out of their bleak stupor and breaking whatever dark spell had captured them so. Their eyes widened, and their head shot up, disorienting themself some—though certainly not anymore than the old man’s simple receiving.

“Whuh—wh-what?!” Ahnu stuttered, confounded beyond belief. 

“Alright.” Rozel unhelpfully reiterated, turning back to Ahnu with a wary, but mostly weary smile. “I believe you. Stranger things have happened. This world of ours is full of strange magic’s, after all.”

Ahnu stared at him, shocked, much to his amusement. 

“If a fairy can fix a broken arm with a little twirl, then I’m willing to bet that there’s some spell out there that can teach you an ancient language!” he remarked, chuckling some at the ridiculousness of it all. He wasn’t wrong. “Besides, I’ve been rude, with all my assumptions and interrogations.” 

So that’s what this was. An out. He was giving them an excuse. Ahnu wasn't exactly socially comprehensive enough to pick up on the finer aspects of the subtle offer, so much as they recognized that not attempting to further the discussion at that very moment—opting to remain complacent in their reticence—would lend to the end of the dreaded subject at hand. It was a needlessly analytical take on situation, and one that derived the same conclusion as that the average individual with more communal finesse would have observed far more easily, but that was just how Ahnu happened to process most things.

Ahnu nodded along, wary themself, but ultimately grateful to close the topic. 

“Why don’t I make it up to you? I’ve got quite a few secrets and stories I’d be willing to share with a hardy adventurer, such as yourself.” Rozel suggested, turning back to his desk, picking up his previously abandoned pestle with one (shaky) hand, and tugging on the vane of the blinds shading the window above his prep space with the other, letting the bright, late morning light in. Pointing out to the vast blue sea, the same color as his eyes, he continued, “There just so happens to be a few tales passed down of sunken treasure in the ocean around here…”

* * *

It was night when they returned the raft Rozel had so politely lent them. It occurred to them, more than once during their 9 hour excursion, that cryonis walking might’ve been faster than trying to pilot a shabby water-fairing vessel for the first time. But with how kind he’d been to make the offer in the first place, and with favorable South-bound winds promising expediency, they accepted with little forethought. 

They were glad they’d endeavored to grab a Korok leaf from a palm tree, as the magical bit of foliage, enhanced with enchantments of wind, was the only reason they were able to return the binded flat of logs. It was nice to know the leaves weren’t as useless as Ahnu used to think. 

“Good to see you back in one piece!” Rozel greeted them, having waited on the dock for their return. “The Lizalfos and Octoroks past the inlet didn’t give you too much trouble now, did they?”

“No.” Ahnu curtly responded, hopping off the raft with the docking rope in hand. They tied it to the pier as they reassured, “I just ran them over.”

“Pfff! Bwah-hah!” Rozel barked out, throwing his head back to laugh. “Hah! I’d have loved to see that!” The old man wiped a tear of mirth out of his eye, before asking, “So how was it?”

“I found a couple chests of treasure in the middle of a triangular cluster of rocks.” Ahnu responded, enthusiastically tugging the neon-yellow sword off of their back, to show it off to the elder. “There were a couple of gems, and this thunderblade.”

They weren’t sure where the whole “golden” portion of his riddle came from, but they managed to extrapolate the probable location of the trove based off of the whole “center of the triangle” thing he’d mentioned. If there’s anything they’d learned during their travels by then, it was “when in doubt, check the map.” It’s solved every puzzle that’s otherwise stumped them thus far, anyways. 

“Really?! Ho ho! Incredible!” Rozel exclaimed, admiring the golden glow of the weapon that brightly illuminated the nearby surroundings, looking especially lovely on the surface of the dark waters below the dock. “After all these years, people still manage to surprise me.”

He reached out a hand to brush over the brilliant linear runes that endowed the blade with the power of electricity, entirely unhesitant at the potential harm it may have posed. There was no real danger in engaging elemental weaponry—Ahnu had learned that well enough on their own—so they didn’t bother to stop him. It took a certain degree of acceleration to fully activate the volatile constitution of elementally enhanced armaments, with the only palpable effects when stationary manifesting as a radiating field of static, heat, or cold. 

“Never thought I’d see this old thing again…” the elder murmured to himself, tracing the edge of the thunderblade pensively. 

They quirked their head up at him, tilting it in confusion as their brows knit closer together accordingly. By all means, their uncertainty was well-founded, his words evoking an appropriate response of puzzlement and intrigue. Rozel, for his part, didn’t immediately react as if he’d said something so saturated in some disjointed overtone that was lost on his company, until he chanced a glance up at the Sheikah-dressed Hylian. 

“Hm? What’s the matter?” he prodded, aware enough of Ahnu’s perplexity, but still clueless as to his own slip of the tongue. 

Ahnu studied him for a moment before answering. The light of their weapon gleamed starkly off of his glassy eyes. 

“Is this yours?” Ahnu asked, not quite sure what answer they expected. 

“Wha…?” Evidently, Rozel wasn’t quite sure how to answer. 

He looked at them, less directly, almost dazed by the insinuation—or maybe by something else altogether. But then his head fell back down, and watery eyes glistened gold before unshed tears were blinked away. He laughed softly, mostly to himself. He sounded sad. 

“Got a bad habit of talkin’ to myself. Always have.” he reasoned. 

So he was just thinking out loud?

“But…” Rozel hesitated, patting the blade before rescinding his wrinkled hand altogether, and bringing it hold his other behind his slouched back. “No. It’s not mine.” he finally answered, before playfully retorting, “It’s yours now, I’d say!”

He chuckled some more, but his mirth sounded hollow—empty of sentiment. It was a type of noise Ahnu couldn’t mistake, no matter who it came from. One of the many things the dead king had taught them of, even if he hadn’t meant to. 

Ahnu just stared at him, not sure of what to say. 

“It’s just…” he continued, unprompted. Clearly, he had something he wanted to say, but his eyes never left the glow of the blade. “An old friend of mine used to hide little treasures around the village. Pretty shells, and maybe some rupees in the sand for the kids…”

He looked up at Ahnu, just over their shoulder, past them. He watched the silver light dancing across the ocean's surface diminish into nothing over the navy waters, as the moon finished slipping behind Cape Cales, like it did every night. He smiled again, a little more sincerely. 

“But for the older ones, the young adults that wanted a taste of adventure they couldn’t get anywhere else without the risk of not coming back—“ he nodded towards the sea, prompting Ahnu to turn and look at it with him. “He’d go out, just past the inlet, and hide a bunch of old goodies in the reefs, daring the newer fishermen to go out and find it all.”

Ahnu looked down to the blade themself now, sort of understanding. The electric sword belonged to his friend—a kind man by the sound of it. They looked back up, over the ocean. 

“He’d make all these—silly little riddles,” Rozel recounted fondly, with an undertone of wistfulness about him. “and spread them around Lurelin like rumors. That there thunderblade is just one of the many things he’d picked in his youth, when he traveled all around Hyrule.”

“Where is he now?” Ahnu blurted out with no self-awareness or sensitivity whatsoever, mostly aware of what the answer would be. They hadn’t seen anyone around town that was nearly as old as Rozel—but more telling, was just how doleful the subject was. The elder seemed both compelled, and dejected to speak about this ‘friend,’ which was a most unfortunate sign. 

“Hah, well.” Rozel mused, unfazed by the nature of the inquiry. “He’s in the ocean now.”

Ahnu winced. Mostly due to their hindsight, but the directness and blunt implication of his curt wording was a fair factor in it. 

“Most of him, at least.” Rozel added. “The rest, we sent back with a couple of his things to his other people, up in Kakariko.”

His _other_ people? _Kakariko?_

Rozel’s friend… was he…?

“When you first saw me, back at the Library—“ Ahnu posed, turning back to face Rozel. They looked him in the eye, and for once, it was the other party that didn’t look right on back. “You thought I was Sheikah.” they stated, before emphasizing, “ _Another_ Sheikah.”

“Hmm.” Rozel hummed. “That’s right.”

He didn’t need to say anything else on the matter. The confirmation was two-fold. 

“Well, it’s late.” the elder dismissed, closing off the conversation. “I best be heading off to bed, before my nephew comes and hounds me about it.”

They more heard than saw him make his way off the pier, their eyes having since fallen back to the sword. The shuffling of his boots across the palm wood dock, creaking following him every step of the way. When it stopped, they heard the distant crush of sand, along with a quiet mutter.

_“Come inside soon, yeah?” he said from the shore, barely audible over the rush of the sea winds and noise of the fussy high-tides._

At the call of a voice that was distinctly _not_ Rozel’s, they spun around, catching the briefest glimpse of man far younger, but with hair just a white—blue even, in the dark tint of the night—before he melded back into the elder, who shuffled on through the sand.

* * *

Ahnu was at the commerce docks, picking through and examining the arrows on sale under the lantern lit awnings over the general produce and supplies the shop offered. They’d been running low on arrows ever since they entered the Faron region, and were tempted to buy out the entirety of the harbor store’s stock before they headed off to the hotel for the night. The abundance of electric arrows were particularly enticing. 

“The weather here is so nice and warm.” came the chatter of a Gerudo, who’s name Ahnu happened to overhear as Flavi, conversing personably with the shopkeeper. “It’s not at all like that blazing heat in the desert!”

Ahnu tilted their head some, looking away from the stand of arrows, over to where the two women were conversing. They’d been talking amongst each other since Ahnu had arrived only five minutes prior, leaving no room for the Sheikah-garbed Hylian to comfortably interject. They could only pick through and inspect the quality of each individual arrow for so long until there were none left and they’d be forced to stand around awkwardly, waiting to make their purchase. 

“I’ll bet.” Mugs replied just as pleasantly, leaning back against one of the log beams that supported the canopy, over next to the scores of fresh fish she had on display. “But it can't be all that bad. After all, a town filled with a bunch of big, strong gals like yourself sounds like a dream to me~”

“Heh, well~” Flavi cooed, voice dropping even lower than it already was, eyelids fluttering half closed. “I much prefer it here. I never knew how good the fish of the sea were—or the women, for that matter.”

The flirting reminded Ahnu that they’d yet to try the local fish themself. They’d have to remember to go fishing, first thing in the morning, but before they could think about any of that in great detail, they _needed_ to buy these arrows. They only had a couple dozen left. 

“Hah! Is that what brought you all the down here to the South-East coast?” Mugs playfully retorted. 

“Well, it’s certainly why I’m staying.” the Gerudo quipped, earning a snort from the shopkeep. “But it was tales of that island, the one far off to the East, that brought me all the way out here.”

Ahnu perked up at that. 

“You mean Eventide Island?” Mugs questioned, earning a nod from Flavi. “Oh, yeah. I’d stay away from that place if I were you. The late elder used to go on and on about how it was haunted, and that none of us fishermen should go near it.”

“Well, I don’t think I’ll manage to get there anytime soon, that’s for sure.” Flavi sighed, hands on her hips as she looked out over the South waters. “It’s actually hard to get there by sea. I’m no great sailor, or swimmer for that matter. Honestly, it seems like you’d need a pair of wings to get out there.”

“Probably for the best.” Mugs assured, before suggestively dropping her own voice an octave. “I’d hate for a lovely thing like you to get possessed.”

That seemed like as good a time as any for Ahnu to interject, and buy out all the arrows on the pier—which may have been the only reason Mugs wasn’t particularly annoyed by the intrusion. 

Storing away the arrows in the Slate as they departed the docks, Ahnu padded over to the front of the seaside hotel-boat, ready to turn in for the night. 

Well, almost. 

They stopped before the entrance of the Inn, at the bottom of the stairs that lead inside. Their head turned towards the shore on their right, where the salt water lapped against the sand of Lurelin’s beach. Part of the strip stretched out of view, obfuscated by the green, rocky ridge on the edge of the hotel’s natural foundation. It was there, under that ridge, that Ahnu had their last bit of business for the day. Ahnu trudged around the slope down to the homely altar lit by rusted metal torches, where sitting ever-patiently under a stacked rocky alcove was the local Goddess statue, looking out over the very beach she sat on the edge of. 

She wore a fresh crown of braided bush-vine with white water lilies from the village spring and deep pink hibiscus from the planters or wild bushels around the huts. An offering, or at least a thoughtful homage, from one of the residents. It looked wrong on her.

Rather, she looked wrong, with everything so lovely and simplistic seated around her. The juxtaposition—which probably only existed in Ahnu’s mind—was uncanny. They didn’t like it, and refused to look her in the eyes as they prayed. 

Was that wrong? It felt wrong to Ahnu—to exchange the spirit orbs they’d collected for an unspecified amount of divine enhancement, all while trying to remain detached from the Goddess during the transaction. To ignore her. 

To take what they wanted— _no_ _,_ not wanted. This was a mission forced upon them. This was a habit instilled in them, all the way back at the Great Plateau, by the **_King._ ** By **_her._ ** And it was one that they kept up—compromised on—when they were only half-aware. Half-awake. 

It felt...exploitative. Like the dead and divine used their fragile, empty state of mind to manipulate them—to rail them into a legacy they would have outright rejected had they been more cognizant of _literally anything._

And they _still_ didn’t understand. The full scope of the world’s peril, their presumed responsibilities, _their own_ **_gods damned_ ** _fragmented subconscious—_ all of it was lost on them. 

The King had shoved the onus of lumination onto someone else, disavowing any and all obligation he had to aiding Ahnu—as if that was _okay,_ or _decent._ And the Goddess—Hylia—she ignored them right on back. Only rendering aid as she saw fit.

 _‘What do you want from me?’_ Ahnu thought. It was a hollow inquiry. An experiment with an outcome they already knew. _‘Tell me what to do. Tell me what’s missing. How can I fix this?’_

 _This,_ of course, could have been one of many things. 

Hyrule. The Calamity. Their mind. 

_‘Just tell me.’_ they nearly demanded, had the desperation and dread flooding their head like sea water—stinging their mind like salt rubbed in an open wound—not turned it into a plea. _‘I want to hear it from you.’_

Not anyone else. Not this ‘Impa.’ Not the ghost of a long dead king who’s washed his hands of them. Not any strangler in a tragedy-stricken world, riding the precarious peace like a wave about to crash against the rocks, tossing and crushing everyone else who wasn’t already swept under the tide—who hadn’t already drowned. 

_“Go,”_ She so serenely mocked, just as she always had. _“—and bring peace to Hyrule.”_

Their right hand itched, and for a split second, their thoughts went to the thunderblade on their back—

But before they could even think to evaluate the abstraction in their head, fear stayed them and bit back at the numbness that pricked at their balmy skin, like sand was seeping out of them instead of sweat, falling down through them as it would an hourglass and making their limbs feel heavy. Their pores were clogged with terror (and anger), and it was all for the best—even as it all twisted their gut like a knife. 

Whatever line of thought _that_ was, they didn’t want to expand upon, let alone _pursue._

They swung around, intent to leave and sweep their quiet, treasonous despair into the very ocean that bore witness to the struggle, as if it were just the irritating granules of sand that dig into their skin under their stealth gear. They thought of nothing else but escape from the scene. They hardly acknowledged their renewed vigor, on account of whatever it was she did to 'enhance' them (as if they were just some thing for the Goddess to improve). They couldn't savor the feeling of having no spirit but their own dance (writhe) behind their ribs, having managed to amass the perfect amount of spirit orbs to dispose of the entire lot in one fell swoop, nor could they fully process just how empty the ordeal was (and how similarly, it left them feeling). No confidence, or solace, or even respite was promised in her stony eyes. Just an unbearable amount of untempered lonliness, even—and perhaps escpecially—in the inexpressive (...uncaring?) face of the divine. They took a step—

_“Say goodbye to the Goddess Statue, -----------.” Elle urged, staying them with a touch of the shoulder. The last word was strangled and nearly imperceptible, sounding as if it had gotten stuck in her throat. “You won’t see her again. Not for a long time.”_

—And stopped. 

Their right hand reached up, but only to brush over the site of the phantom touch, as if they might just be able to catch the spectral fingers. Turning around, slowly, they peered back at the stone edifice.

And for a moment, the Goddess wore a necklace of shells instead of a crown of flowers—the color of every possible sunset and sunrise glinting off the abalone in the center. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the next chapter, the day after Halloween! The uncharted past seems to have a lot of poignant markers here in Lurelin, huh? Next time, Ahnu has a weird dream, and goes about the rest of their day in Lurelin like nothing's wrong! Thanks for reading along!


	19. Chapter 19--  A Dream and a day in Lurelin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu spends another, more domestic day in the laid back fishing settlement, where they tend to their basic needs, indulge in some of the local activities and cuisine, interact with a host of villagers--and even some familiar faces! Of course the who thing is a bit dampered by a particularly unusual dream they have that very morning...

_ Their hands dug through the sands just beneath the clear, lapping water, sluggish and heavy with the cumbersome drag of the sea’s resistance—though, the feeling persisted throughout their entirety when they stood back up to their full, but insubstantial height. The heaviness was probably just the sword, hidden beneath the silks their vama had tightly wrapped it in. It was so long, and it used to be nearly the same height that they were all the way back then—but now, it didn’t drag on the floor if they carried it properly. The rolling waves that slicked up and down the shoreline behind them alternated from submerging them to their shins, to up their knees, which felt bare. The water was warm and the night was cool, which meant that it was time to go inside. _

_ He’d asked them to come back inside soon, and that was back when the cape hid the moon. When the ocean began to glitter silver for the second time, they knew they’d stayed out too late. They should head back before the moon went into hiding once again, behind Mount Dunsel. _

_ When they turned to leave, to run back to his hut, they were still disorientingly slow—and for a moment they were so confused and lost, that they were  _ **_themself_ ** _ again. Only vaguely aware that this wasn’t real, and that they didn’t understand where they were or when.  _

_ Nighttime, they abstractly acknowledged—but then it wasn’t, and they were picking around the shallows yet again, during the low tide of high noon, along the Southmost shore of the bay. Their consciousness slipped back beneath the surface of the water they scoured for seashells and mollusks, and that other persona—the one that knew what was going on, and fit this role perfectly as if it were the contemporary and everything was normal and fine—assumed their place. Or maybe, the two of them were the same, because they saw the same and felt the same, and neither reacted to the other like they were a pariah in their shared body. Their realities were isolated from one another, but they existed adjacently on the same plane, and really, only one was aware of the other—sometimes.  _

_ The clueless them, who knew far more than the them who was only just barely aware that something was amiss, recalled how they weren’t supposed to go past the Village posts, because that’s where Lurelin’s beach ended and Korne’s began, and the sea goddess didn’t bless Korne Beach—her protection was limited to Lurelin.  _

_ They remembered that they had to hurry, because their ahma would be back from her mission soon, and they would go to see their vama in Kakariko, since she was back from the desert after moving all their things through the canyons and fields and mountains—all to the hidden village amongst the pillar mountains of Lanayru. They didn’t really want to leave Lurelin. It was warm here, just like it was back home. They didn’t want to leave home either—but their new home was going to be in Kakariko, now.  _

_ They stuck their arm into the salt water and stirred around the sands, mesmerized by how irregularly globules of the stuff danced around them, congealing like oil in water. It wasn’t normal or real—the sand should have been a cloudy mist of sediment—but they didn’t seem to notice any of that, happily brushing off and aside the masses of granules to get at the shelled creatures that were frantically digging deeper into the earth upon being exposed to the open ocean. They plucked another piddock out of the water, and it looked to be the right size. They were only looking for ones the size of their ear now. It took two days, but they finally had enough, and were happy with their collection as they added the mussel to their netted bag that sat a little bit deeper down in the shallows.  _

_ It would have been easier to kneel into the water, without the obstructive thing on their back. It was so big, and heavy—but they weren’t allowed to go anywhere without it.  _

_ It also would have been easier to find more down at the tide pools by the inlet, where the old pearl farm used to be, and they could see the rocky outcrop just past one of the palm groves, but they weren’t allowed to go that far alone. He was back at the hut, making something for them, so he couldn’t take them out again. They didn’t know anyone else in the village, and they were at the edge of it to stay away from the other kids—to be alone. They’ve only been here a month. And it was almost time to go. They wished they could go back again, and find him another one of those purple clams.  _

_ Queen clams were his favorite.  _

_ They were about to leave the beach, but recalled one last little task they set out to complete before their little search came to an end. They’d almost forgotten (again?) about what he’d told them. _

_ ‘A gift from Nacra awaits the adventurous, poised between and buried beneath the boundary that divides us from the wild seaside.’ _

_ It was a silly riddle, so pompous and densely worded. The answer was simple, but it was a bit too verbose for the other kids of Lurelin, who went about digging wherever they could on the beach closer to the heart of the village. It had to be only one of two places, and he knew that they liked the South more than the East.  _

_ They dug up the little treasure from between the torch-beams that partitioned Lurelin from the rest of the bay, where they weren’t allowed to go, and discovered it to be an abalone—suspiciously, already cleaned and polished. The outside of the shell looked like a cross-section of red sandstone, with striations of lighter sediments striping its rugged surface. The nacreous inlay gleamed a brilliant array of iridescent blues and greens, purples and yellows, with sinuous, inky brown trails patterning it all.  _

_ It was perfect!  _

_ They were going to use a big, rosy-orange scallop they’d found a while back, when he took them swimming in the bay, but this shell was much prettier. Orange was Ahma’s favorite color, so maybe they could save the scallop shell for her.  _

_ They were admiring it still, but now it had a hole in it, and they weren’t at the beach anymore. It was sunset, and they were sitting on the stairs of his hut, waiting for their Ahma so they could go pray together. He drilled the holes into all of their shells for them, and they strung them onto some of his dark green, fake-silk embroidery cord. He let them choose the color. _

_ “I’ve got a surprise for you!” he chimed behind them. “A little going away present, for my favorite voi!”  _

_ They laughed. They were the only ‘voi’ in the village. They were inside now, eating fish and rice for dinner. The wrapped sword sat behind them, propped up against the wall of the hut. Ahma wasn’t here yet. He said her hawk came, and that she’d be here at night. They looked up to a face that looked so similar to her’s, but happier. _

_ He beamed at them, pushing a wicker box over to their side. He’d been working on something special for them, ever since they’d come to the village. When they opened it, hasty and delighted, they gasped at the contents.  _

_ It was a maroon tarp, made of the special silks he and Ahma always wore, with soft leather holds on each of the four corners. The most eye-catching element was the emblazoned symbol of the Rito, embroidered in the center of the square sheet. The bottom and top edges were embellished with the same type of cross-stitching, with the out-most sides of the mirrored patterning displaying a green stripe—the same color as the string they used for their necklace—with an orange, blocky, castle-type line stretching on inwards, towards the bird.  _

_ It was so beautiful! And soft! And— _

_ … _

**_And exactly like their paraglider._ **

_ Something fractured just then. It may have been them, or something in the air around them, but either way, the association sparked something in the air, which was charged with an uncanny overlay now. In an instant, the other them—the one that didn’t know what was happening, but knew that it wasn’t really happening—broke through the surface, gasping for air as if they’d been drowning in the obscurity.  _

_ They were sluggish again, but so very acutely aware of how alien their surroundings were, as they tried to swivel their head from side to side—to understand where they were. But they couldn’t really see or hear anything, because the moment they looked away from something, they couldn’t remember what it was they were only just on the cusp of making sense of. There was a faint warbling noise coming from just behind them, but it stayed behind them every time they tried to turn to face it.  _

_ Then, a voice cut through it all. Something just barely more concrete, that they could cling to, despite the fact that the lot of the words didn’t add up to any real meaning for them.  _

_ “You always wanted a sailcloth, right?” _

_ They turned to the voice, and saw a man they thought they recognized. He wore an altered version of the navy under-apron the Skeikah in Kakariko wore, with a red eye of truth plastered on his chest—a swirl for a pupil. His skin was dark and almost cool toned, and despite his youth his hair was white, done up in a manner that reminded them of Sheikah monks; the particularly pious individuals from the village of the shadow folk—wait, no. They didn’t remember any of that (did they?). His hair reminded them of the monks—the ones from the  _ **_Shrines_ ** _. His wavy, near kinky-textured hair was tied partially atop his head, falling with the lot of the white fluff to just about his shoulders—two tufts of the stuff out in front of his ears were tied as well, and pinned in a way to frame his gentle, exuberant face. Firelight and fondness were glinting off of his bright, red eyes.  _

_ He was the only person in the room—in the world—just then. Who did he look like?  _

**_Her._ ** _ He looked like her.  _

**_Elle._ ** __

_ Something else snapped, and just a little bit more of themself—the pieces they’d left below, drowned and buried—resurfaced. They knew who they were now. In the now. Not back then, when they must have known who this person was, but now, when they knew nearly nothing.  _

**_“Who are you.”_ ** _ Ahnu asked, more hostile than curious, hugging the cloth to their body. Their arms wouldn’t quite tuck in right, and their legs were just numb and wrong, folded beneath themself. Why were they so small? The shadows on the walls were beginning to stretch and warp menacingly around them, and he was the only figure in the room that escaped being subjected to the deformation—like a beacon of sanity and goodness with that unfaltering smile on his face, and sadness in his eyes.  _

_ Then he was gone, and the sheet was tied around their neck like a cape, tight enough to have been a noose. Something heavy pressed against their back painfully— _ **_burning._ ** _ They were looking into the stony eyes of the Goddess now, adorned with a necklace of shells—a particularly stunning, iridescent and multi-colored one serving as the centerpiece, and a litany of white, wing-looking ones ranging from big to small crowding it on either side.  _

_ Ahnu tugged at the cloth around their neck in a panic, trying to pry it off and trying to look away from her, but they just couldn’t.  _

**_‘What is this?’_ ** _ they thought, regaining their cognizance in dreadful increments. The air around them got blurrier, darker, though that may have just been because it was night out—or at least, it seemed like it was supposed to be. They couldn’t tell for sure. The more aware they were, the harder it was to perceive anything beyond themself. _

_ But the hand on their shoulder grounded them, if only a little.  _

_ “Say goodbye to the Goddess statue, hummingbird.” she urged them.  _

_ What did she call them? They looked up to her, lost.  _

_ “You won’t see her again. Not for a long time.” she somberly added, looking down at them with tired, red eyes.  _

**_“Elle.”_ ** _ Ahnu said, which they really shouldn’t have. It was the wrong thing to have called her. Not incorrect, but not right either. It felt wrong, but so did everything in this— _

**_—Dream_ **

_ That’s what it was. A dream. And evidently, the dream didn’t like them trying to rationalize everything—not sticking to the part. Not doing what they were supposed to do, or saying what they were supposed to say. The false reality fell away around them when they strayed.  _

_ Ahnu blinked, and Elle was holding their hand now, pulling them along to the North border of Lurelin. The tail ends of her scarf that rested against the moonlight scimitar that was clipped to the harness on her back—a light green mass of cloth that displayed the same darker green and orange embroidered pattern as that on their sailcloth—no,  _ **_paraglider_ ** _. She was speaking, but they hadn’t caught the first half of it, garbled a mess as it was.  _

_ “—we won’t be coming back.” she’d just finished saying.  _

_ She was looking at them, having stopped in her tracks, a serious expression on her face. This was how Ahnu thought she should look—the face that suited her. They didn’t like it. They didn’t like that she was holding their hand, either.  _

_ She was saying something else now, in a soft voice while touching them differently—reassuringly?—but Ahnu understood none of it. Didn’t want to. _

_ She was tugging them along now, and Ahnu resisted every terrible, slow step of the way as darkness consumed them. They were wrapped in even more cloth themself now, tight and concealed like the thing on their back that pressed  _ **_so_ ** _ uncomfortably against their spine, and hit their left leg every other pace. _

_ It was when she’d brought them to the posts that marked the border of the town, the entrance they’d seen back when they first glided down to Lurelin from the base of Tuft Mountain, did they give one last tug of their own—freeing their hand. _

_ Falling backwards—the weight on their back was just so heavy, it **dragged** them down— _

**_Blinking again—_ **

Ahnu opened their eyes, and they were laying in their rented bed, in the back of the fishing resort.  _ Still _ in the fishing resort. They never left the hotel—only their mind had. 

They tossed their head to the side, feeling their scalp to be unpleasantly numb from having slept flat on their back, pressing against the headrest just a little too heavily. It was brighter outside. Morning. 

By the time they’d sat up in bed, swinging their legs over the edge of the flat, they were still dazed and had forgotten more than half of the dream. By the time they’d gotten dressed and adorned their weaponry, they’d forgotten half of that, too. All of everything before they began to tear themself out of their unconscious illusions were muddled down to dull obscurity when they’d bowed a ‘Hello’ to the innkeeper.

When they’d walked out of the seaside inn, Ahnu could only remember Elle, and the man who looked like her—and sounded like the  _ Archer. _

* * *

Ahnu’s first order of business that morning was to fish. They hadn’t tried the local profession’s main produce as of yet, and as good as the seemingly unending supply of crustacean was, they were still eager to add more than just an over-abundance of crab to their current diet. With how much they tended to enjoy a well grilled bass, they couldn’t wait to try some fresh porgy. 

They cut open a fresh palm fruit while sitting out on the steps of the pier next to the commercial docks, intent to wash down their breakfast of roasted razor claw with the sweet pulp as their bare legs rested in the saltwater. They’d impulsively bought a bottle of oil made from the seeds of the fruit back at the hotel, for no real reason other than it happened to smell good. Chessica explained that the oil was particularly good for sautéing fruit, but that most of the villagers preferred to use it as a lotion. Apparently, the stuff was the second most popular export of the village, alongside the obvious trade of fish and all manner of sea-life, which made sense with just how much of it was growing in the tropical seaside. The innkeep also keyed them in on the fact that the fibers of the sweet fruit-flesh were excellent for cleaning teeth, making it a nice alternative to chewing on the pulp of trees to scrub their mouth down. 

So many interesting things they were learning in this little coastal village—like how fish liked bananas about as much as they did. Which was a lot, if the sheer amount of porgy swimming about, picking at the few they’d peeled and tossed into the ocean was anything to go by. They giggled when one bumped into their leg, unaware that Ahnu wasn’t just another sedentary fixture in the bay, before sweeping the unaware fish out of the water with a quick swipe of their hand. The rest of the nearby porgy were soon to follow in abduction and introduction to the confines of the Slate. 

Satisfied with their stock of sea creatures for the time being, Ahnu’s second task was to attend to their hygiene. As much as they appreciated the smell of the sea, they couldn’t honestly admit to liking the odor of it sticking to every thread of their clothing, or every strand of hair on their body. 

There was a nearby spring to the upper, Eastmost portion of the village, where all the residents bathed regularly, only collecting their water from the mountain waterfall that fed it. They admired the simple and efficient carving in the face of the rock—a heavily eroded diagonal trail that led to the left of the pool—which diverted a fair portion of the spring water over to a resin-treated trough that was built into the side of the mountain as well. The artificial waterfall was evidently the main and preferred source of drinking water for those in Lurelin, closely followed by the well near the cattle grounds—which, while more convenient in terms of locality, was less favored by the locals on account of how much better the water from the mountain tasted. 

Ahnu tried some of the mineral water for themself, making ample use of one of the provided communal ladles. They found it to be almost sweet with how refreshing it was—indeed, much better than the well water. They could see why that stuff was really only ever given to the cows, and happily replaced the lot of their own fresh water stores with the mineral water, filling 4 large waterskins before returning them all to the Slate. 

They didn’t even know that they owned 4 separate waterskins. The rest after the first were all just more impulse purchases they made from different merchants during their travels, but it wasn’t like being well-prepared was a tradeoff with hindrance for a vagabond that had no upper-limit of encumberment. For all that they’d collected so far, that Slate has yet to give off any indication that it had any sort of maximum storage capacity—save when it came to armaments, apparently. They were still trying to figure out a way to reroute their weapons storage to their materials tab, effectively evading whatever dumb programming that limited their melee, shields, and bows slots to such a comparably small collection. So far, they had no such luck in that ongoing endeavor. 

Their third task of the day was…well, up for debate. When the entirety of their new-life only revolved around compulsive adventuring and Shrine hunting, there wasn’t much else for them to do when they stuck around in a single location for longer than circumstance permitted, save leave.

But...they didn’t exactly want to leave just yet. Sure, there was little utility therein when it came down to internal debate, but they rather liked the seaside settlement. It was so much warmer here than anywhere else they’d been in Hyrule thus far, and far less humid and subject to unfortunate weather patterns than Faron. The people here were just as kind as you would expect anyone in good-spirits to be, save the occasional inebriated fellow that would stumble out of the library-casino in a dismal, but not exactly sour mood. It was a lovely village on all accounts, plentiful in good food and a congenial, carefree atmosphere. 

It was nice, this little corner of Hyrule—clearly repressed issues notwithstanding.

And it was in that one, sullen respect that Ahnu felt that recurring impulse of theirs to get up and on with their travels, intent on evading whatever it was about Lurelin that made them...nostalgic. They’d be lying if they tried to convince themself that Kakariko hadn’t soured their already tenuous relationship with unfounded sentimentality. There was something—something old and intangible—buried as deeply in the sands here as it was in their mind, which only seemed to be as incomprehensible as their conscious (and evidently, their less inhibited subconscious) allowed it to be, but with clarity as repugnant as they’d only ever know and expected it to be, they weren’t certain of how willing they were to dig it up. 

Even if the promise of treasures—memories, far gentler than any they’d barely known before now—beckoned Ahnu from the watery graves of things long since past, and gone, and utterly indecipherable awaited them. 

But how could they ever expect to understand anything—specifically anything about themself, as terrifying (yet morbidly transfixing) a prospect as that was—if they refused to allow some semblance of—of that  _ self— _ back  _ in. _ Or out. Out and into their current stream of consciousness from the ether where it seemed to float about freely as mist, waiting for them to come and recollect it across the land. Out of whatever portion of their half-empty mind it was so neatly and tightly compressed, trickling into the depths of their thoughts from the growing cracks of their abstract containment. 

It was a terrible fear of theirs, this reality of their circumstance. One they tried, and ubiquitously failed—every single time—not to think about. 

What would happen if those seams ever burst? Would the onrush of that someone who they used to be wash away who they were now? Would they be entirely subsumed into that person, just like how the impartial and insubstantial remnants of the devout Monks were melded into their being—a pressure in their chest, waiting to be shed? Was that any different from dying?

_ Was that any different from the dark— _

“Hey, Mx.?”

Ahnu flinched, stilling in the sands where they’d been pacing a decently deep trail for the past couple of minutes. They’d absently found their way back into the heart of the village, and had been roving the centermost beach back and forth during their feverish contemplation like an absolute  _ madman. _ It wouldn’t have been all that surprising if one of the locals had tasked their children with the awkward imperative of asking them to desist. 

As slowly and non-threateningly as they could, they turned their head down to the kid that had called to them—which only seemed to unnerve the child further. Right. People aren’t like animals—even the children. They noticed another, younger-looking child standing far off from the one engaging them, standing behind one of them many torch posts as if he were hiding. Were they really that scary?

They waved to both of the kids, trying to alleviate any remnant tension. Considering that their audience were transient-minded children, this attempt on their part worked marginally better. 

“Uh.” the kid up close noised, still justifiably weirded out, but not particularly wary of the strange Hylian. “You’re a traveler, right Mx.Sheikah?”

Maybe they should purchase a different change of clothes at some point. 

“Yuh-yes.” Ahnu stuttered out, following an exasperated sigh. They quickly decided against pursuing the subject of their race, unwilling to delve into the specifics of their garb and their relationship to the shadow folk—of which there was none (that they knew of)—with yet another of Lurelin’s residents, and a child no less. They had enough difficulty trying to convey a mere sliver of their convoluted life to an adult—they weren’t about to try and do the same to someone with an understandably inferior sense of deductive reasoning. “Ahnu. I’m Ahnu, an adventurer.”

It was still so strange—to say their own name aloud. 

“Oh! Cool!” the child exclaimed, eyes narrowing even more in excitement than how thin they were at rest. “You must be super strong to handle all the monsters and evil stuff out there!”

Ahnu smiled weakly at the accurate enough presumption. Getting a good look at the kid, the only features of his that stood out were his partially shaved, partially tied up hair, and the necklace around his neck—decorated with glass beads as blue as his eyes, and a single nautilus shell of a rather curious shape. It was curled tightly and uniformly as one would expect the mollusk shell to be, but the opening of the chamber curved aggressively away from the rest of the structure—like a swirl with a tick at the end. 

Strange. A deformity of the nautilus that once inhabited it maybe. Perhaps an unusual sub-species altogether, where the involute outer-edge needed to stretch away from the center whorl to accommodate some unique feature of the local type of tentacled mollusk.

“Do you know where Aris Beach is?” the kid asked them, before adding, “That’s where the fishermen are going later, after they’re done packing up for the voyage. My dad is one of them!”

Ahnu tilted their head at that, pulling out their Slate to evaluate the map. They couldn’t imagine that the fisherman had to travel particularly far for fishing, considering how abundant they’d observed the local sea-life to be, just in the harbor alone. Sure enough, they’d found this “Aris Beach” on the opposite side of the Clarnet Coast, segregated only by another, more open harbor—an excellent place for large scale, commercial fishing by the looks of it, with no risk of being swept out to the greater expanse of the South Sea. 

_ ‘What’s out there?’ _ Ahnu briefly wondered, turning to look out at the flat horizon. From where they were, they saw only ocean. 

“Ask them about the crabs, Zuta!” shouted the smaller child, from behind the metal torch post, regaining Ahnu’s attention. When they looked over to him, he went right back to ‘hiding’ behind the pole. 

“I’m getting to it!” the older kid, Zuta, shouted right on back, before turning back to Ahnu. “Me and my brother, Kinov—that’s him—“ Zuta pointed to the cowering child, much to the hardly concealed displeasure of Kinov behind the torch, “—we were wondering if you could help up catch some crabs for our mom! Since you’re probably really good at hunting and foraging and stuff!” Zuta insinuated, beaming at Ahnu. “Our dad usually helps us, but he’s got to get ready to go out to the Aris harbor.”

Ahnu thought it over, before shrugging some and nodding. Why not? It would help take their mind off of things that they didn’t want to think about—and frankly, they found that kids often made for more pleasant, less critical company than adults. Right now, they just wanted to interact with others who posed no potential to skeptically analyze them, and were instead just as invested in every little intriguing distraction as themself. 

Crab-hunting sounded nice. 

* * *

“Ahhh!” shrieked Kinov as he stomped in place, half surprised, half delighted. “Get it! Get it!”

“RAAAH!” Zuta roared, blocking the ocean at every turn of the scuttling crab, spooking it away from the water and towards Ahnu.

Ahnu snatched it up, much to the amusement of the cheering children, and tossed it into the netted bag with all the other Razorclaws and Ironshells that squirmed about their enclosure. They’d been helping the two for nearly an hour, as the late morning creeped into noon, and the sun fully over Cape Cales. The mornings in Lurelin were dark—just the same as the evening prior—on account of the surrounding mountainous ridges that fully enclosed the village, but when the high noon sun shone directly down onto the entirety of the settlement, it was beyond bright and hot among the sands. 

They’d worked out a system with the two kids, who roved about the beach’s shallows, looking for bubbles in the sands with sticks in hand. When they spotted the gurgling of the buried crustaceans, the children used their poles—each a half of a harpoon staff their father had sawed in two after removing the barbed blade—to pry the crab up and out of the ground, after which they chased the creature over to Ahnu, who was unafraid of handling the crabs directly. The group had caught nearly two dozen crabs like that, which seemed to finally satisfy them all. 

Ahnu took their third of the crustaceans, chuckling as the children ‘ooh’d’ in wonder at their handling of the Slate, and carried the rest of the crabs for the kids who led Ahnu around and up the beach, to the porch of their homes. Ahnu was surprised to see that the family occupied two separate huts, with the parents living in one and the children in the other—though, not as surprised as the kids mother was to see her children leading a stranger to her home, a bag of crabs in tow. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry about my boys!” Kiana sincerely apologized, after scolding her children in front of Ahnu, much to the ubiquitous discomfort of everyone involved. “I swear, they bother every person who wanders into the village—neither are quite old enough for public schooling at the library yet, so they certainy have plenty of time to do just that! Thank you so much for humoring them and their silly little escapades—here’s a little something for you, dear.” She rewarded Ahnu with a purple rupee, which they tried to convince her of as being unnecessary, but she’d dismissed their concern with a wave of her hand.

“Oh, don’t worry about it! The crabs you’ve brought home are worth a lot more than that! Besides, it’s thanks to you that my boys and I will be eating well tonight!” she assured them, which they could hardly argue with—not that they were given the chance, as she’d immediately turned her attention back to her kids. “Ah! Children! Don’t lean so far over the edge.”

Turning around, Ahnu saw Zuta and Kinov doing just that, hanging over the edge of the porch that overlooked the beach on their hands and knees. Evidently they’d just been interrupted while talking with someone Ahnu couldn’t quite see from the angle and distance between them and the ledge. 

“But mooom—” Zuta whined, looking back to Kiana.

“The painter’s back!” supplied a cheerful Kinov.

Painter? 

Ahnu walked over to the edge of the porch, looking over the two boys—

“Huh? Oh!” came the familiar voice from the even more familiar, paint-smeared face they’d seen back at Kakariko. The man pointed up at them enthusiastically, “It’s you!”

Ahnu pointed right on back, with an equally excited expression that was only partially obscured by their sheikah mask—thrilled to see Pikango again.

* * *

“Jeez, man…” Armes bemoaned in between mouthfuls of porgy. “3 months. What took you so long?”

“I’m old!” Pikango laughed. “Hah ha! Took me a month to get there, and a month to get back. What’d you expect? I’ve been wanting to visit Kakariko forever now! I wasn’t gonna book it right on back!”

“Pft. Old, you say. You ain’t no elder, uncle Piko.” Armes argued, without little substance or even genuine aggression, before turning to Ahnu—who was a bit too involved in their own meal to really consider the conversation altogether. “Can you believe this guy?”

Ahnu just shrugged, far too busy eating to bother with an answer to the rhetorical question. They were happy to take up the offer of lunch Pikango’s nephew had extended to them upon his uncle’s return, and now the trio sat around an open fire on the East shore of Lurelin near the commerce docks. The young fisherman, Armes, was apparently taking his last break before he was set to depart with a couple others from the village on a fishing voyage to Aris beach. 

“Ah, whatever. Come off it, Armie.” Pikango chastised, mirth wrinkling his face. “Besides, who are you to talk to me about timing? I finally get back, and you’re about to leave!”

“That’s your fault!” Armes humorously retorted. “Besides, I’ll be back in a few days. You’ll have Garini to keep you company.” he quickly added, followed by him muttering, “Though, not sure how much company that fanatic will keep.”

Ahnu lifted and tilted their head at that, having finally finished enough of their fish to focus more on the conversation than the food. 

“Hah! I haven’t even seen him yet!” the old painter laughed. “He’s still down at those ruins most of the time, is he?”

Ruins? That sounded interesting.

“Oh, it’s gotten worse.” Armes responded, exasperated but not particularly grave or even judgemental. “He’s started camping out on Palmorae Beach. I feel like I hardly see him anymore myself.”

“Ah, good on him for having some passion!” Pikango chimed. “I’m happy he’s into something constructive, like archeology, instead of gambling—like you and every other youngin’ in the village!”

“What? Are you too high on the pigments to remember that I’m a career fisherman?” Armes rebuked, albeit with little bite. “You and that geek eat because of me! I’m out there slaving away on these voyages, and here you are painting the waters I’m braving!”

“Braving? Hah ha! As if! The boats don’t go more than a kilometer past the coastline, and you know it!” 

It was charming, to see how casual and close the two were. They’d seen a few families at this point—at Stables, Kakariko, and here in Lurelin—but they’d yet to witness the easygoing intimacy between two relatives that were more akin to peers, than child and guardian, in such depth. What a unique dynamic they had, with little to no cognitive barriers between them, on the same wavelength of interaction that came effortlessly and inoffensively—even as they bickered. There was a special language between the two Ahnu couldn’t hope to gauge, as much as they did admire it. 

“This is how you treat the money-maker? Really? I’m off, seven days a month to wrangle fish, and you really wanna pick at my only hobby?” Armes jeered, feigning indignation. 

“Try bad-habit, maybe.” Pikango admonished.

“How long does it take for you to fish?” Ahnu inquired, somewhat cluelessly. They’d been under the impression that it didn’t take much to sustain the village.

“Huh?” Armes noised, turning his head to them with wide eyes, a bit caught off guard by Ahnu’s sudden vocality. “Oh, uh, not long. We tend to set out twice a month to go for bigger hauls over at Aris’ Bay—to give our own harbor a short break, yeah?”

“Us villagers tend to only eat what we catch here in Lurelin.” Pikango added. “The trade fishermen export almost the entirety of their catch to Hateno.”

Ahnu found it interesting how Pikango said “us” when referring to himself and his nephew, who looked so different from one another. Sure, there were local Hylians of a paler complexion in Lurelin—rather, mostly Hylian people, considering Pikango’s mixed lineage—but the lot of the populace seemed to be defined by brown skin of varying shades, thick and dark hair that also came in a multitude of textures, and blue eyes. Pikango certainly didn’t lack in the latter-most regard, though his eyes were more a stormy cobalt than a bright cerulean, but his hair was mostly thin and white with age—not to mention that he was far lighter-skinned than his blood-relative nephew. The villagers of Lurelin were undoubtedly Hylian, but Ahnu couldn’t help thinking of the people here like they would of Sheikah, or even more recently, Gerudo. Different to mainland Hylians, but also not—or maybe just not as much, in the case of the people residing in the seaside settlement. It’s not like there weren’t dark-skinned Hylians of completely separate heritage in Hyrule, but the people here just felt distinct from what little Ahnu’s come to understand of the continent’s demographics, like there was a certain degree of homogeneity to be found among the people here that they couldn’t find in the hodge-podge mix of the mainland. Granted, Ahnu didn’t know much of anything—their perspective was limited to a collection of passive, short term observations and general inklings. 

Perhaps this would change in the future, once they’ve learned (or remembered) more about the lands they traversed. Perhaps they could even learn ( **remember** ) just where they fell on that binary of descent—what with their brown skin, dark hair, and pale grey eyes.

“Yeah. We pack up our ships with some other goods before we go, on top of all the normal supplies that get us through the travels. Palm fruit and oil, bananas, cocoa, and a bit of pottery and jewelry whenever the demand in Hateno is pretty high for the stuff.” Armes gladly expanded, happy that  _ someone _ took an interest in his job. “Basically, we head over to Aris beach, then all the way back and around Cape Cresia and Cales, past Tenoko Island and Loshio Harbor. We meet with the traders of Hateno on their South road, docking between Kitano Bay and Hateno Beach, and after we finish up with an exchange of goods, we sail right back home. Takes about three days, all in all.”

What was that last part about? They'd been so caught up in their near obssesive level of over-analyzation and introspection, that they'd hardly caught the lot of Armes's explanations.

Helpfully, but hardly to Ahnu’s now distracted notice, Armes added, “If you’ve got any business at the commerce docks, better go get it done now, since Mugs is one of us fishermen—and one hell of a trader. Shop will be closed for the next three days.”

“Kitano Bay?” Ahnu parroted in delay, their inflection raising to that of a question. That was the place Kass said he’d be going, wasn’t it?

“Hm? What about it?” Armes asked in kind. 

“Where is it?” they more decisively inquired.

“Ah, just a bit North from here.” Pikango interjected. “Just go on up the Necluda coastline. The rocky harbor you’ll pass along the way is Loshio, and then the bay after that is what you’re looking for.” He then turned away from his own half-eaten porgy from where it sat, speared on a harpoon in his lap, to look at Ahnu a little more fully. “You heading off soon?”

Ahnu considered the question for a moment, before shrugging. They weren’t quite sure. There wasn’t much else to do here in Lurelin, and there certainly wasn’t any obligation keeping them in the village. If they had to choose their next destination on the spot, it would have definitely been the bay in question—but they weren’t exactly in a rush to leave. Not yet, anyways.

“Hah, well, I am.” Armes said, picking himself up off the sands. “Gotta take care of some business before I get back to work.”

“What? Gonna go gamble with your boyfriend real quick instead of spending some quality time with your uncle?” Pikango playfully berated, attention back on his nephew. 

“Come off it, will you?” Armes rebuked, hands on his hips, eyes rolling. “Chance isn’t even operating today. Professor Cloyne’s with the kids.”

“Professor?” Ahnu murmured, quiet and incredulous. He couldn’t have possibly been talking about the inebriated librarian. 

“Good. I hate that dumb gimmick.” the painter admitted, slapping a hand to his knee. “I passed Rozel on by way back into town. He says Cloyne’s gone and made a mess of the Library, turning the lot of it into a stage for his stupid casino. He should’ve just kept that business in his backyard—maybe focus a little more on teaching the younglings.”

“That man is a  _ teacher _ ??” Ahnu remarked a little louder, beyond bewildered.

“Yeah, but only four days a week.” Armes replied with a shrug, before flashing a knowing smirk at Ahnu. “I’m guessing you met him on one of his off days? Yeah, he’s a completely different guy when he hits the booze. Fun though.”

“He’s a prick.” Pikango retorted, side-eying Ahnu—who may not have known everything there was to know about the drunkard-librarian-gambler-teacher, but couldn’t help but agree with the statement, if only just a little. 

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Armes brushed off, turning around. He waved while walking off. “I’m gonna go meet up with Numar for a bit. I’ll see you at sundown, Piko.”

“See you then, Armie.” the artist called, waving right back, before attending to his half-eaten meal. 

Now it was just Pikango and Ahnu. And boy, was that a  _ lot _ more awkward than Ahnu realized it might be. 

It had only occurred to them, just then, that the last time they’d seen Pikango was before their...little issue in Kakariko. They’d left in such a hurry, and so abruptly without any indication that they would do so, that it wasn’t unreasonable for the old painter to be curious as to just  _ why _ they would do such a thing. Ideally, he wouldn’t bring up the subject, but realistically, and unfortunately—

“So, how have things been going for you?” Pikango asked after another minute of eating. “You sort of just disappeared back in Kakariko. You alright?”

Ahnu had pulled a few apples out of their Slate and had busied themself with munching down on the fruit, just so that they’d have something to do instead of watch him eat, but his conversational inquiry halted all efforts towards pleasant distraction on their part. They stopped chewing, not quite sure how to answer him. It wasn’t exactly about their sudden disappearance back in the village of the shadow folk, and for that they were grateful—but that didn’t mean that they knew how to condense a month’s worth of expedition in an elegant manner. Their capacity to articulate things in general was decent at best, but subpar at length. 

‘I’ve been fine.’ Ahnu signed, mouth still full of apple. They swallowed, and vocally resumed, “I killed a Stalnox, and a Hinox.”

Was that a strange subject to get into? They wern't quite sure. Most other travelers looked at them funny on the rare occasion that they felt comfortable to share meager accounts of their exploits—half of them time demanding some sort of proof (getting particularly squicky when presented with the innards of monsters, since apparently teeth and horns "aren't good enough" because "anyone can find those laying around"), and the other half just brushing off the subject altogether.

“Really?” Pikango gaped, eyes wide but not unbelieving. “That’s crazy! I bet that stealth gear of yours helped a ton, huh? The clerk at the clothing store back in Kakariko tried to sell it to me, too—but I’m an old man who doesn’t need all that fancy junk. It’s not like I’m off fighting monsters, like you youngin's.” He looked them up and down, before continuing, “She said it’s built to reduce the amount of noise you make by a ton, and that it’s made of the same fake-silks as the clothes I’m wearing. I’m guessing all that’s true?”

Ahnu nodded, a little relieved at how readily accepting and unflinching he was of their escapades. Pikango was a rather strange individual after all, though perhaps Ahnu having discovered the Great Fairy Fountain, and having carried the older man up a mountain trail to see it might’ve clued him in on them being a little more than ‘average’ themself. 

“Can’t believe you went and bought the whole set! Hah, I almost didn’t recognize you, all geared up.” he professed with a chuckle, before looking over to them a bit more warmly. “It suits you.”

That...stirred up something in the depths of their chest—something heavy. They smiled back, sincere but—sad? They didn’t really understand why the compliment impacted them so thoroughly (it was more of a statement, wasn’t it? Well, they certainly took it like a compliment), and made their chest feel dense, but not tight. Hollow, but not empty. Something warm and airy was gently rising and falling behind their breast, to the rhythm of their heartbeat, and yet their stomach felt prickly with the nausea of anxiety all the same. 

They tugged abashedly on the strip of cloth of their paraglider-bangle—absently realizing (recalling?) that both it and the material of their stealth gear were the same cloth. 

Their Sheikah garb really  _ did _ suit them, in more than just the aesthetic sense. It was tailored specifically with the intent to emphasize stealth—a manner of operation Ahnu was just so innately accustomed to working under, that they often unconsciously defaulted to it, in even the slightest of actions. Always walking on the ball of their feet—footwear permitting—but slipping easily into a smooth roll from the lateral outer foot to the heel at the slightest of stimuli. Diligently keeping track of the direction of wind flow relative to elevation, so as to ensure that not even the air around them could betray their presence. Breathing lowly through the mouth as they approached prey and monsters from an angle unseen—like a silent predator might. 

In every manner, subliminally and otherwise, they were built to evade detection. They  _ enjoyed _ remaining unseen and unheard when it suited them. The Sheikah stealth gear accentuated the only bit of prowess they perhaps felt some bit of pride towards—

And it really was comfortable. They couldn’t overstate how natural it felt to wear—like a second skin. 

‘Thank you.’ Ahnu signed in response, looking off to the side, down to the sand. Abashed, but still smiling. ‘I think it does too.’

“Heh, good.” Pikango chuckled, taking another bite out of his food, chewing and swallowing before continuing, “It’s good to know what you’re about. And I’ll bet that getup cost a fortune.”

“It did.” Ahnu blurted out, earning a hearty laugh from the painter. They liked how genuine and simple a person Pikango was. 

After his prolonged bit of mirth subsided, the artist propped both of his hands on either knee of his crossed legs, leaning in over the smoldering fire the fish had cooked in, a big smile plastered on his face. “Speaking of payment, I never did get to pay you back for taking me up to the Great Fairy fountain. Why don’t I tell you a bit about Lurelin?” he offered, piquing Ahnu’s interest. “There’s an especially fun story I’ve got from about two decades back, about this handsome Zora prince that once saved the bay from a HUGE Octorok—”

“ _ Uh. _ ” Ahnu noised, which is all they got to utter before Pikango went off on a lively tirade. 

* * *

“You really like arrows, don’t you?” Mugs asked, playful and mostly rhetorically. 

Ahnu decided to make good on Armes’s recommendation, and do one last sweep of Lurelins main shop to see if the produce had been cycled out for anything they might want to buy. It came to their pleasant surprise that the stock of normal arrows had been replenished. They again bought the open-air store out of its armaments, as well as the last few bundles of mighty bananas available for purchase. 

‘I was running low on arrows before I came here—‘ Ahnu signed, brushing their right hand over the back of their left twice, followed by them using the same hand of action to make a grabbing motion. ‘—Lurelin.’ they somewhat redundantly clarified. 

Pikango saw fit to teach them the sign for the village name, which was the latter half of the word “coast” that transitioned into the word “catch.” Ahnu was happy to have learned it, and was eager to use it in conversation. 

“Well, I’m glad we could help each other out! If you ever need more, come on by! ” the seaside shopkeep grinned, tucking away the three red rupees Ahnu had paid forward. “It’s nice to have another archer in the village.”

Her parting statement confused them a bit, as they hadn’t met any other archers in Lurelin thus far—and frankly, they weren’t even sure if they would consider themself an archer, so much as someone who happened to know archery. They weren’t given any time to ponder either of these notions however, as their thoughts were quickly drowned out in the commotion on the pier. 

Ahnu was far from the only customer at the shop. Aside from the fishermen busy loading up the last bit of supplies for their evening voyage as the sun began to set, half the village had started to show up to the commercial docks, which was evidently a regular occurrence before the fisher’s set off. All perishable merchandise was significantly reduced in price, attracting the lot of the residents. Having never before experienced being in a location SO full of people, Ahnu couldn’t say that they were much of a fan. The constant chatter from every angle, punctuated at every other word by the piercing creaking of the loaded docks—which drew concern from Ahnu regarding the ambiguous weight-limit of the port—was a bit too overstimulating for them, especially with the sheer density of people surrounding them. 

To the credit of the villagers, the chaos was incredibly organized. As the shoppers browsed, they ubiquitously, consistently, and completely unprompted by any one of the dock-workers, managed to shuffle to a single side of the pier closer to the display tables—all in order to make room for the passing fishermen as they loaded up their medium sized boats with provisions. They also formed a rather tidy line behind Ahnu, all waiting patiently for their turn to make their purchase with the clerk, so that was nice and civil. 

Ahnu was still rather relieved to depart from the docks with little issue, and contented themself with eating some of their recently bought bananas on the adjacent beach, a good dozen meters from the hustle and bustle of the pier. 

“Oh, hey.” came the voice of someone Ahnu had yet to meet. 

They turned to see a young man with dreads, the whale-tail necklace around his neck indicative of his status as a fisherman, rolling a barrel of what Ahnu could only presume to be water across the sand. If they recalled correctly, he fit the brief description the elder Rozel gave of his nephew, back when he’d shared tea and stories of treasure with Ahnu the late morning prior. He also fit the more specific description Pikango had given of his own nephew's boyfriend—Numar—what with the assortment of glass and gem jewelry he wore. 

Pikango had also told them that jade, as well as turquoise, were the main mineral exports of Lurelin, and that the latter was especially prized in the village. Numar certainly wore quite a bit of it, with one of the bracelets on his wrist being comprised of nothing but rectangularly carved and polished turquoise beads, strung along some dark twine. Otherwise, he wore an assortment of violet glass and dark brass beads on his trade necklace, ankle bracelet, and even his obi-cord. 

Most of the people in the village were rather expressive in terms of ornamentation, sporting some form of dangling jewelry on their person—though never rings. Probably due to how easy it would be to lose them in the ocean. 

Ahnu signed a simple ‘Hello.’ to the man. 

“You’re the one my uncle was going on about, right?” Numar asked, halting entirely, though not before rolling his barrel out of the way of any incoming fellow workers. “The one who he stayed up waiting for yesterday?” 

Well, that wording certainly made them feel guilty. It must have shown on their face, I’d Numar’s immediate response was indicative of their readability. 

“Ah, don’t worry about that. He’s usually out on the South docks doing just that all day anyways.” he assured, before his eyes flicked above Ahnu’s head, to look over and past them at the pier in question, just a kilometer off across the bay. “My old man can’t exactly do much fishing nowadays, so he just sorta idles near the water most days.”

That sounded...kind of miserable to Ahnu. Sure, the ocean was gorgeous, and they’d yet to tire of the shifting and glistening hues on the horizon, or the colorful fish and coral reefs in the bit of ocean visible along the shores, but they couldn’t imagine doing nothing but observing just it, all day in, day out. The limitations of possessing an elderly body might’ve been a large factor in his inaction, but from what little they could garner from the old man, he certainly seemed a tad understimulated—and now they could see why. 

‘Doesn’t that get boring?’ Ahnu signed, concerned, with a slightly furrowed brow. Numar looked at them a bit strangely, but his expression didn’t exactly read as disagreement. 

“Yeah, I guess.” he finally sighed, after some deliberation on his part. “But it’s for the best—er, well, at least I think it is. Truth is, I really worry about him.” Numar admitted. “He used to be a real uppity old coot, running about the village doing gods knows what with the kids and teenagers, acting like he wasn’t nearly 90. But then…”

Numar paused a couple of beats, earning a tilt of the head from a curious Ahnu. He was still looking out over to the opposite dock, where his uncle secured his old raft and often lingered around this time of day—though, he wasn’t present there right then. 

“But what?” Ahnu quietly inquired, spooking Numar only a little. He recovered relatively quickly, chuckling some at his own scare, but somberly, like he was finding some bittersweet humor underlying the whole situation. 

“Heh, well, I guess his age must have finally caught up with him.” Numar supplied, not quite elaborating in any useful way. He looked back down to Ahnu, adding “I actually wanted to thank you for breaking up the monotony in his life. He seemed real excited to meet you.”

And they must have disappointed him, not being the type of person he’d thought they were at first glance. 

“Besides, it’s not all that bad for him. He’s started tending to mollusk down by the tide pools on the west side of the inlet.” Numar optimistically supplied, soothing some of Ahnu’s own gloom regarding the ordeal. “There used to be an old pearl farm there, ‘bout a couple decades before Hyrule fell into chaos. He wants to get it running again.”

That sounded neat. Ahnu was actually a little relieved that Rozel had something to do other than idle around the village. He seemed like a sweet person. Shrouded in enigma, sure, but it seemed that most elders that lived to be his age or greater were just like that—mystifying and worldly. A long life must do that to a person—especially nowadays. 

“I think he’s out there now, actually.” Numar stated, looking back out over the waters again with a hand over his forehead to shield his eyes from the golden gleam of the setting sun, but further towards the South. “He’s taken up the habit of chilling there when us fishermen set out every two weeks. He likes to wave us off as we sail outta the inlet, and over to Aris beach.

“That’s nice.” Ahnu felt the need to say, genuinely warmed by the thought. 

“Yeah, well he’s got the family dog with him, so he’s probably alright...” Numar mumbled, his voice tapering off in volume near the end. He still sounded concerned. “Still, I wish he wouldn’t go so far out. It may sound silly, but I’m a bit of the superstitious type. There’s this old myth that Lurelin’s looked after by a minor ocean goddess, but that her protection doesn’t go past the village borders.”

Ahnu looked up at the young man, instantly captivated by his ramblings. 

“Really, it’s just something we all tell the kids to keep them from straying too far off, but I always liked to think of those old legends as something with a ring of truth to them, you know?” He looked back down to Ahnu now. “I wish he wouldn’t head out there alone.”

It didn’t take Ahnu much consideration to settle on their next course of action—at least in the immediate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo! Sorry for the wait! I'll be posting the next chapter right after this one to make up for it! I got a bit caught up trying to work on some supplemental art for this and the next chapter--which I'm still going to post, just later. I've got to remember, I'm writing this story to primarily get it out, but also to improve my writing AND drawing capabilities. Don't want to get too caught up in one or the other.
> 
> Anyways, It's certainly been a long day for Ahnu, huh? Well, it isn't over quite yet! Tune in for the next chapter where we have an interesting discussion with Rozel, and even learn a little something about the enigmatic "Archer" for once! Thanks for reading so far!


	20. Chapter 20--  Nacre and Hummingbird Feathers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu goes to check on Rozel, Lurelin's resident elder, and keep him company for the evening. They talk--quite a lot, actually--and Ahnu is finally given a name to put to one of the still mostly mystifying entities that seem to haunt their consciousness.

It was nearly 6:00PM when Ahnu had reached the intertidal zone just outside of Lurelin. It was already dark at the inlet, the area shrouded in the shadow of the overlooking Tuft Mountain, which was slowly encroaching on the rest of the coastal village. For the same reason the mornings were dim, the evenings were evidently just as afflicted by the overcast of the bay’s encapsulating, mountainous ridges. Though, further out to sea, where the sun still shined, gold glistened off of the water—and the distant outcropping rocks, funnily enough. 

So _that_ was the "golden" factor from the riddle Rozel had shared with them. 

They snuck up on Rozel, albeit unintentionally, with his only clue to their presence being his dog lifting her head up and off of his lap. She must have caught wind of Ahnu’s scent on the South-bound breeze, and gladly padded over to them. Rozel turned to look at them briefly as they pet her. 

“Ah. Hello there.” he greeted warmly, before gesturing to another mound of rock that was reasonably tall and flat enough to sit on. “Why don’t you join me and Daisy by the waters? Ocean’s lovely this evening.” They noticed the fuschia hibiscus in his ragged grey hair, contrasting with the cool colors of his attire and the general insipidity about him. 

Ahnu nodded, stepping over the pools of segregated seawater that filled during the high tide, the golden retriever in tow with a wagging tail. An assortment of colorful creatures and small corals littered the puddles, the shells of innumerable mollusks of all different types and species encrusting the dark rock of their containment like jewels embedded in rusted metal. They sat down near the elder, Daisy curling up around the handheld lantern between the two. Rozel turned back to face the teal expanse beyond, off into the distance where it gradually shifted into a rich, deep blue that cutoff at the saturated candlelight color of the sky. It was above that soft orange and below the blue-grey of the bedim atmosphere that the open air took on the slightest sheen of mint somewhere amidst the confused gradient. It really was lovely. 

After a minute or so of silent appreciation, Ahnu began to pick up on the slightest of whirring noises off to their side, difficult to hear over the constant sloshing of the water against the rocks, and the distant crashing of the ocean far off. The onslaught of ambience was further amplified by the addition of the unfaltering winds, picking up stray locks of hair too short to stay in the bun atop their head and sweeping the dark mess forward to gently undulate around their face. Despite this, they did eventually source the sound to their right, where Rozel sat particularly still and upright, with a half smile tugging on his wrinkled cheeks. 

Honestly, they’d thought some bug had flown a bit too close to their ear—but when they looked at the elder, what they saw was a hummingbird.

It flitted about his head, trying to drink from the bright flower tucked behind his ear as the elder accommodated the small thing by trying to remain sedentary—a task that evidently became somewhat difficult when he got a good look at Ahnu’s utterly enthralled, wide-eyed bewilderment. He chuckled some, scaring the bird off briefly, as it fluttered roughly a meter away before diving right back in for more nectar. Slowly, he reached a hand up to the hibiscus, plucking it from his mop-head hair, and languid as the lapping water at his feet, he presented it over to Ahnu—the hummingbird following along. 

“Here.” Rozel offered. 

Simple and inarguable as that. Ahnu couldn’t think of any reason to not accept.

Just as slowly, Ahnu procured the bloom, holding their breath as the small, colorful bird transferred its radius of attention from Rozel to them. They brought the hibiscus closer to themself, cupping it in relaxed hands that rested on their lap. They let out a small gasp when the hummingbird perched itself on one of their palms to better get at the flower without having to further expend energy in the acquisition of nectar, prompting Rozel to laugh aloud. Ahnu shared his smile now. 

They observed the creature reverently, mesmerized by its form and frailty. Its vibrant plumage came in an assortment of stark, iridescent shades in the dying light. Its body’s flank most excellently displayed the gradient of golds and muted greens that shifted into each other seamlessly—multichrome in the effect. The softer down below the eye-catching arrangement, and along the lot of its stomach, was a muted and muddled array of beige that was especially pale beneath the comparatively vivid, violet and copper gorget. Upon closer inspection, Ahnu couldn’t help but compare the miniature, incredibly fine feathers that specked the tiny thing’s body to scales. Brilliant, jewel-like scales that were shaped like scallop shells. 

Soon enough, the bird realized that there was no more nectar to be had from the pink flower, and flew off behind the two Hylians, away from the shore and back to the mainland palms to rest for the night. Still, Ahnu looked down to the hibiscus in their hand, gently running the velvety petals between the pads of their fingers while twisting the vine that was its stem around their other index. They lifted the flower up to their face, pulling down their mask to smell the bloom, yellow pollen tickling their now exposed nose. It was nearly odorless, with only the slightest discernible fragrance of some collage of sweet fruits. 

“That’s the flower of our village.” Rozel supplied, entirely unprompted but not completely unwarranted in his lumination. “I’m sure you’ve seen it all around Lurelin, in planters and wild bushes.”

Ahnu nodded, mind idly wandering to Kakariko, where the representative bloom was blue nightshade. What would the flowers of other settlements be? They supposed that they would find out eventually, when they left Lurelin.

“I’ve seen a lot of those birds too.” they passively remarked, dredging up the most topical thing they could for conversations sake. They tucked the flower behind their own ear, not sure what else to do with it. 

“Hah, yeah. That’s our village bird.” Rozel responded. He was still looking at Ahnu, hardly to their notice—studying them. “They’re everywhere too.”

Village bird? Ahnu hardly thought that people would find such a thing worth qualifying, but then again, they had the same impression about regional flowers. They wondered if Kakariko had one too. They recalled a fair amount of hawks flying about the hidden settlement, but they weren’t sure if the abundance of a certain species of avian had anything to do with the determination of their significance to any given populace. Were that actually the case, then it would have been more appropriate for seagulls to be emblematic of the fishing village they lounged on the outskirts of. 

“They’re beautiful.” Ahnu nearly whispered, quieter than they’d meant to speak, yet still more vocal than they felt so inclined to be. They were referring to both the flower, and the small bird. 

“Hmm…” The elder hummed along, sounding just a little pleased. “My nephew sent you here to look out for me?”

They looked up to him now, flower forgotten in their lap, a little surprised by the assumption. It was erroneous, but still an incredibly astute conclusion for Rozel to have made with little observation—though, it would have been more accurate to say that the old man’s take was more or less adjacent to the truth. 

“No.” Ahnu simply replied. “I wanted to come down here.” It wasn’t a lie. They offered Numar the assurance that they’d watch over his uncle until the fishing boats passed, and then walk him home—not the other way around. 

“Humph.” he skeptically noised, but not with any real underlying indignation. His tone quickly shifted to playful though, his half-smile re-emerging as he jested, “Well, I’ll bet you you just wanted to come see the clams I’ve been tending to!”

“Yeah.” Ahnu passively agreed, their candid, unflappable attitude earning a sincere chuckle from Rozel. That was definitely a part of it—albeit, a small one. “Your nephew said this place used to be a pearl farm. I thought that sounded interesting.”

There was a particularly large pool out in front of them, full of various different types of clams, already starting to be overtaken by high tide due to its lower elevation relative to where the two Hylian sat. The most prominent looking ones appeared to be a little bigger than Ahnu’s fist, with a rich purple hue radiating along the striations of their growth lines from the hinge, gradually shifting lighter and lighter until the carapace was a clean white. 

_‘Pretty…’_

Ahnu wasn’t sure if the echo in their head was their own, but the sentiment wasn’t one they would dispute. 

“Yeah. Long time ago.” Rozel confirmed, looking back out over the ocean. “It was the trade of one of the older families in the village, back in the day. It fell into disrepair though, being neglected for so long.”

That was a familiar enough allusion to Ahnu. Most things and places have suffered the same fate as of the last century, as indicated by those left floundering in the remains of Hyrule—if the obvious ruination wasn’t direct enough an indicator. 

“Because of the Calamity?” Ahnu, rather reasonably—if a bit thoughtlessly—presumed. They didn’t miss Rozel’s minute shifting where he sat, as much as they didn’t know what to make of it. His slightly furrowed brows though, they read a little better. They probably needed to learn a bit of sensitivity. 

“No.” Rozel answered, pressed but not exactly irritated. “It was before that. Not by much, but it definitely preceded…” he trailed off, not needing to round off the statement to get his point across. 

The two sat in silence for a little longer—Rozel looking out towards the horizon, and Ahnu at the mollusks adhered to the rocky outcropping all around and before them. 

In the steadily dimming air, the soft yellow glow emanating from Rozel’s lantern became more and more prominent, eventually catching on something more peculiar than the reef creatures in the waters, not too far off from where the Hylians sat. Well conditioned, Ahnu was prompted to whip the Slate off of their hip—and without any regard or general self-awareness about how their actions might be perceived—they engaged their magnesis rune to dredge up an old, rusted chest. 

To his credit, Rozel didn’t do much else than raise his eyebrows. He let off an encouraging, low whistle when Ahnu kneeled to pull out the single purple rupee someone felt compelled to store away in an unnecessarily large chest. 

“Been a long time since I’ve seen any Sheikah magic.” the elder alleged. 

Not an unrelated, or even unwarranted comment, considering the context—but it was certainly odd. Probably not as odd as literally anything about Ahnu, especially with their inane demonstration, and it was definitely consistent with the trend of odd the Sheikah-dressed Hylian had so abruptly set, but none of the underlying logic to the situation prevented Ahnu from turning to gape at the old man—inquisitive and incredulous as if he was more of a spectacle than themself. This, obviously, evoked a lively laugh from Rozel. 

“Hah hah! What?” Rozel barked out. “You’re looking at me as if I’m the strange one! Aren’t you the not-Sheikah who’s dressed like one, speaks like one, damn near _acts_ like one—using their sacred technique’s?”

That was fair—and it certainly made Ahnu flush in long overdue self-consciousness. The elder was patient though, and in relatively good humor now. He didn’t try to push the subject, giving Ahnu ample time to process whatever they needed to, be it embarrassment, confusion, new information—and all the like. 

For Ahnu, it was some degree of all three factors. As soon as they shed their slight humiliation and sat back down on the mound they’d previously occupied, their immediate attention was diverted inwards, ruminating on the topic of “Sheikah magic” and all the implications that followed. Is that what the runes were? Were the applications of the Slate just manifestations of the specialized magic’s of the shadow folk, accessed through the Slate—as if the device were some sort of conduit? That deduction followed logically for Ahnu, who was satisfied enough with their own reasoning to avoid furthering the sensitive subject that was their personal (nonexistent?) relation to the ancient race of people. They elected to distract themself with a tangential line of thought. 

—Like about the mysterious elder. For Rozel to have known about Sheikah magic—to have evidently _witnessed_ its use at some point in his life—implied that the modern Sheikah people utilized these “sacred techniques” to some extent. 

“How do you know about these things?” Ahnu ambiguously inquired, elaborating only some by adding, “Sheikah things?”

Rozel appeared to mull over their question for a moment, more like he was attempting to stratify—to strain and perhaps even prune his answer than altogether compose it. It was too simple otherwise, to have taken so much deliberation to formulate. 

“That old friend of mine once taught me about many things regarding the shadow folk.” he somewhat predictably replied. “—Considering that he was one of them, after all.”

The reiteration of their conversation from the night prior wasn’t lost on Ahnu—though, after the earlier events and encounters in the new day, they couldn’t help wonder about something else.

“You know Pikango.” They said. It was a statement, not a question. 

“I do.” Rozel agreed, neutral.

“Isn’t he Sheikah?” Ahnu asked, more so rhetorically since they already knew the answer. “You spoke of your old—“ _dead_ “—friend as if they were the only Sheikah here.”

 _‘You greeted me as if you hadn’t seen a Sheikah for a while.’_ Ahnu thought, but refused to say—not wanting to risk steering the conversation back in _that_ direction, when they were attempting to evade the topic of association altogether. Though, they knew it was unreasonable for them to expect Rozel’s complicity in their own obfuscation, and even more unlikely that such a generally touchy subject wouldn’t evoke some level of discomfort—in either them, or him. 

—Which is why it came as such a surprise to Ahnu when Rozel burst out laughing for the second time that evening, louder deeper than before, hunching in over himself even further than his normal stature. 

On top of confusion, having found no source of hilarity in what they’d said, Ahnu’s befuddlement quickly morphed into concern when the elder’s incessant cackling made him start to actually _wheeze—_ even more so when he began to alternate between chuckling, and coughing. He was pushing 90, so his shortness of breath was downright _scary_ for Ahnu, who _really_ didn’t want to be the reason Rozel might have a respiratory fit. It was disconcerting enough yesterday, when they’d disoriented the old man to the point of near paroxysm by daring to insist they weren’t Sheikah. They were up in an instant, hands held aloft and just as useless when it came to assistance as they were yesterday. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine!” Rozel gasped between coughs, still in good spirits despite his disposition. “It’s just funny!”

“Whuh—why?! How??” Ahnu asked, incredulous on top of worried. How was any of this funny?

“Be-because—” he paused, taking a deep breath. “Because you called Pikango a _Sheikah._ ” he unhelpfully continued, giving off just a small cough before resuming, “But boy, am I sure that he’d just _love_ to hear that.”

“What? He is a Sheikah, isn’t he?” they asked, starting to question whether or not the painter had lied to them. But no, he couldn’t have. He had some form of ambiguous verification that checked out back in Kakariko, granting him Sheikah citizenship and enabling him access to clothes, provisions, and prohibited areas in the village that weren’t open to the unaffiliated. 

“I _guess_.” Rozel replied, emphasizing the admission in such a way that indicated insincerity—following up the quip with a snort. “But not really.”

Ahnu frowned a little at that. They liked Pikango, and the tone of the conversation was more mean-spirited than they’d perceived Rozel really capable of. The elder seemed to pick up on his own fault rather quickly, mellowing significantly in seconds, mirth dissipating into the thin, salty ocean air. 

“Ah, Sorry… That was harsh of me, wasn’t it?” Rozel sheepishly mused, a hand reaching up to, somewhat nervously, tug on his beard. “I ain’t got no excuse for being so unkind. Truth is, I rather like little ol’ Piko…”

Ahnu’s scrutiny lessened some, and they were back to tilting their head to the side, waiting for the latent explanation. There was an unsaid ‘but—’ following that statement, to be sure. 

“It’s just, he’s a little pompous, don’t you think?” he asked, likely rhetorically considering the slight grimace that spread on his face when Ahnu shook their head, before the expression altogether was washed away by the next roll of the tide. “I mean, sure, he’s got Sheikah blood and all, but he’s hardly versed in their culture. He barely speaks a lick of the language.”

That made...a little more sense to Ahnu, who didn’t feel the need to dispute the claim, even if some part of them—likely a little biased—still disagreed. They sort of thought the conversation would take the turn of ‘he doesn’t look like a Sheikah,’ and since they already extrapolated that something as frivolous as phenotypic qualifiers were mostly irrelevant—maybe even archaic—when it came to determining an individual’s heritage regarding Sheikah ancestry, they would have been inclined to contradict the notion. But that’s not where Rozel was taking the topic. He was touching on something a little more… sensitive? Perhaps even controversial, but not inherently negative in nature—more confounding than contentious. 

“The thing is, his dad was just some passerby half-blood.” Rozel divulged, an antsy hand reaching down to pet his dog. “Never involved in his life—so it ain’t really Piko’s own fault that he never took an interest in anything Sheikah. Nothing wrong with that.” 

Ahnu briefly recalled Pikango mentioning something about the former subject, back when they’d first met in Kakariko—both considered outsiders to the village. 

“What’s a half-blood?” They quickly interjected, knowing that they’d have trouble following along with whatever Rozel would further digress if the term continued to taunt them with its mystique. Still, they flushed some at their own interruption, quickly signing a ‘sorry.’

Rozel looked at them curiously for a moment, his expression going through uncountable shifts—just like the day before. The spell broke quickly though, signified by him shaking his head some and chuckling. 

“Heh, worry none. It’s alright.” Rozel dismissed. “Half-bloods are…well, it’s a little complex. Not sure if I can explain it to you better than an actual Sheikah might, but I’ll certainly try.” he admitted, looking back out over the waters in a distracted manner. “They’re Skeikah who look like how you’d expect a Sheikah to look, but one of their parents was Hylian. ‘Half’ doesn’t really denote how much Sheikah blood they’ve got in them though, since the tribe’s long since mixed with Hylians beyond...a point of purity, I suppose? There’s no such thing as a full-blooded Sheikah anymore. Don’t think there has been for several millennia.”

Oh. Now _that_ was interesting, and much to the benefit of Ahnu’s fixation on the matter, Rozel wasn’t quite done. 

“Most of the Sheikah nowadays look a little different from how old texts and tales would describe them. There used to be a time when all of them had piercing red eyes, and hair white as snow. I’ve only ever met a handful of em’ in my years, in the form of vagabonds or messengers, but near half of them had dark grey or ebony eyes. I hear that even light brown is starting to pop up among the folk.” He began to snicker lightly, reasoning his humor with the quip, “Their genetics are pretty dominant, but they can only take so much intermingling with Hylians until they start to look a little more like us.”

Was that what was happening with the Sheikah? Cross breeding to the point of extreme, widespread heterogeneity? It didn’t sound like it was a bad thing, so much as a thought-provoking reality. Even more stirring was what Rozel felt the need to impart next—

“That old friend of mine—he was a half-blood.” 

Ahnu looked over to Rozel, intrigued, but not astounded. Considering the knowledge relating to the Skeikah he’d only just shared, the statement was less of a surprise and more of a gleam into the elder's personal life. They waited patiently for him to continue, and after a pause, he did. 

“One of his parents was a resident of Lurelin, far back in the day.” Rozel revealed, with little sentiment staining his voice. “He didn’t talk about his family much, but he inherited a lot of processions, and even properties from them. He used to live in one of the huts he left to Sebasto’s family.” 

That was the husband of Kiana—if Ahnu recalled correctly—and the father mentioned by the two children they’d hunted crabs with earlier in the day. That certainly explained why the family owned two separate buildings. 

“He was a bit of a traveler in his youth, mostly before and after his service to the Kingdom, but he settled down as the years took their toll on him. He used to teach the kids of the village, and tended to the library all by himself.” Rozel began to chuckle, and it was genuine, but strained. “I can’t tell you how many times he offered to teach Pikango a little something about the Sheikah, and how many times that paint-huffing hippy refused—then he hears about this ‘Great Fairy fountain’ and suddenly he’s all for connecting with his roots! Hah!” Rozel wheezed a little more as he laughed, reminiscing fondly on a memory made bitter-sweet by time. 

“But eventually, my friend got too old to do even that.” Rozel quickly calmed, and assumed a far-away look, which Ahnu could barely see in his profile. His eyes narrowed at the expanse of the sea, thinning like the horizon. “Sheikah live a long time, you know…”

Ahnu nodded, but it didn’t seem that the elder was actually looking for any kind of response to begin with. 

“Not as long as they used to, but still…” Rozel turned to Ahnu then, catching the grey eyes that had been so carefully studying him. They found the glassy cerulean gaze to be so captivating, that the discomfort they would have normally felt with the intense eye contact was all but abandoned. “He lived a long life. It wasn’t always good, but I think he made the best of it, despite everything.”

This seemed...awfully personal. The connection he was practically imposing on Ahnu felt too deliberate. It didn’t even seem like he just wanted to talk—to vent to the open air and maybe someone empathetic. It was as if he wanted to talk to Ahnu _specifically_ , and they weren’t sure what to make of that. They weren’t even sure why they continued to push the subject—maybe because he seemed to need it. He wanted them to ask about it. 

“What was he like?” they complied with the unspoken request. 

“Oh.” Rozel noised, soft and surprised. “Oh, he was wonderful. Kind. Intelligent. Strong, too—and beyond skilled in too many ways for me to count.” he listed. “He used to be the greatest archer of all the Sheikah.”

Ahnu’s jaw clenched. 

Their useless and forgotten hands found purchase in the cloth covering their legs, fingers digging into the synthetic-silk draping their thighs. They inhaled a little too sharply through their nose, though they weren’t altogether sure why, and Rozel didn’t seem to notice. That tightness in their chest that they had such an aversion to acknowledging assailed them once again, and a faint pulse—in time with the lapping of the rising waters against the rocks—began at the back of their head. They knew what was coming next, if only vaguely, making it hard to resist struggling against it. 

They realized just then, that it was so much easier to just let it happen—to let whatever was dredged up from some corner of their subconscious they were actively locked out of pass as it pleased. It wasn’t a particularly relieving revelation, nor was it one they felt so inclined to indulge—they weren’t even sure if they could stimulate the stream of sentimentality. 

At least, not internally. There was no amount of digging they could do into the depths of their less than barren mind that would pull away with a satisfactory result. But, what they could do…

“What was his name?”

It was a question, but also a prompt. Something where the answer—they just _knew_ —would elicit _something_ in them. 

They tried to ignore it, back when they’d first come to the coastal settlement. No, before that even. Back when they’d first laid eyes on it, and did the same thing. Cleared their head. Closed their eyes. Concentrated on that painful throbbing instead of despite it. And they got the answer they wanted. 

_“Lurelin.” He murmured._

And the echo of one they didn’t. 

_“Home.” Elle whispered._

Something they didn’t understand—outright refused to. _Ignored._ Just like everything else. They wondered then, _‘Would this be the same?’_ The answer was, just like everything else (apparently), something they already half knew. 

And then, with dreary eyes, full of a sadness that was new but also comprehensive—a reflection of grief that still stung, but had mostly come to pass—Rozel offered then yet another answer. 

“ **Aein.** ” 

_“It means ‘eye’” He added._

They weren’t exactly surprised to hear the Archer—or was that Rozel, still speaking? 

But then there was no more on the subject that could be said, as the sound of distant shouting overtook the crashing of the ocean, and the ringing in their head. Ahnu and Rozel broke their intimately precarious eye contact, to look out over the waters of the inlet together, where half a dozen boats of various sizes filed out of the harbor and into the open sea. All of them were well lit by the orange glow of lanterns on their bowsprits and decks—masts too, on the vessels that had them. Three of the larger ships, each carrying an assortment of supplies and karting a fairly sized rowboat, sailed along the dark waters in the near night, traveling along the same route they always have in a neat little column that ran parallel to the shore—like ants in a line. The occupants of the entourage slung a slew of enthusiastic calls towards the tide pools, some waving and even jumping about. 

“Hey! Hey, elder!”

“Elder Rozel!”

“See you in a few, old man!”

“We'll be back with a big haul!”

Ahnu picked out Numar from the bunch, initially by the sound of his voice, since the post-sunset air was too dim, and the crew and ships were about a quarter kilometer away. Their eyes adjusted and refocused, and they could see the young man with dreadlocks on the very last of the larger towing boats, waving both of his arms about. 

“Don’t worry about me, Roze!” Numar yelled across the waters, loud as he could with his hands now cupped around his mouth in hopes of amplifying the volume. “That’s supposed to be my job! Go get some sleep, yeah?”

Rozel stood up to wave, Ahnu mimicking action. They didn’t really like yelling, seeing how just raising their voice a smidge above what’s considered socially acceptable in close-quarters conversation makes their throat burn—and Rozel probably couldn’t shout very loud, even if he wanted to. Though, they did recall a manner in which they’ve seen stable goers call for their horses…

Ahnu pressed their hands together in yet another form of mimicry, letting out a few piercing notes without faltering. Strange how naturally the motion came—convenient, to be sure, but still unusual. Then again, it wasn’t anymore odd than their latent prowess with all forms of weaponry. They were just self-aware enough to question their own oddity now—unlike how they were when they’d first awakened. 

The fishermen cheered at the sound, countering the acknowledgement with a few shrill whistles of their own, which made Ahnu smile. They didn’t notice, but Rozel was looking at them again.

“Hey, kid!” Numar called out one last time as the ships sailed off further West. “Thanks a ton! Get the old coot home safe will ya?”

Ahnu whistled again, which earned a round of laughter from the fishermen. 

* * *

The two shore-bound Hylians watched as the line of ships expertly wormed their way around and away from some more outcrops of rock along Korne beach until the seabreeze that carried the vessels picked up, sweeping them away as night had officially settled in. The early rising moon had yet to pass behind Cape Cales as the two still tracked the diminutive specks of light that gradually faded off into the darkness. Rozel found it appropriate then—in the safe harbor of reprieve the passing sailors and ships had provided—to pipe up again, considerably stable now. 

“Thought you said he didn’t ask you to keep an eye on me?” he quipped, side eyeing them with a glint of humor and lantern light mingling with the blue of his irises. To the credit of the Sheikah-dressed _‘Hylian’_ he found to be somewhat clueless—sweetly, charmingly, dreadfully so—they seemed to pick up on the reference to his nephew.

“He didn’t.” Ahnu simply responded. “I offered.” 

“Hah.” He chuckled. “Kind of you. Suppose we should be heading back, yeah? Tide’s starting to lap at our feet.”

Rozel roused his lazy Daisy, who’d been napping for the entirety of the sunset, with a few pats on the head. Dutifully, the dog was up in seconds, stretching before grabbing the padded handle of the lantern in her mouth, her tail wagging. The elder began to slowly navigate his way through the series of small divots and puddles in the rocky surface, Ahnu close behind and ready to assist in case he misstepped—a bit ironic when he abruptly stopped in place, and they almost bumped into him. He couldn’t help the slightly mischievous smile that stretched across his wrinkled cheeks, but at least they couldn’t see it. 

“Before we head back,” he began turning his head to the side, downwards. Ahnu followed his line of sight, to a tide pool that opened into the sand of the beach. It was full of more of those large, purple-white clams. “—why don’t you pick one? As my thanks for your company these last two days. It’s been quite a delight to have you.”

Ahnu flushed at the compliment, and looked over to Rozel, unsure. He chuckled at their bashfulness. 

“Don’t be shy. If it makes you feel better, these are wild clams. I’ve only recently started tending to the ones in the pools cut off from the land and sea—makes it easier to keep track of them.” Rozel assured. “There’s nary a chance you’ll find anything other than a tasty treat on the inside of em’, but who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

At that, Ahnu nodded and knelt down by the pool, scanning its contents in the light of the lantern Daisy diligently held, and that of the moon. Spotting a clam in the center that looked to be the most consumed by violet, they leaned as far as they could over the water, propping themself up on an arm that was carefully placed amongst the delicate corals and barnacles, so as to not crush or damage any. It impressed upon Rozel just how gentle a person they were. They plucked it from where it rested in the water, getting back up to their feet to marvel at it further. 

“Pretty color, right?” Rozel asked, getting a good look at the vivid carapace of the mollusk Ahnu selected. When they nodded, he asked, “Do you know what we call these kinda clams around here?”

Ahnu appeared to focus on the striations of the shell a little more closely. They narrowed their eyes. Their passivity would have made anyone question whether or not they heard the inquiry, which is certainly what Rozel assumed—that is, until they’d surprised him, for a change. 

“...Queen clam.” Ahnu proclaimed. 

“Oh?” Rozel noised, eyeing them curiously (again). “That’s...right.” He paused himself then, only for a couple beats, eventually recommending, “Why don’t you open it?”

Ahnu turned the mollusk around in their hands, probably trying to find the best manner in which to pry it open. Rozel reached down to the pouch on his belt, intent procuring his sheathed shucking knife for them, when he heard the telltale _‘crack’_ of the hinge ligaments snapping. He looked back up to Ahnu and the opened clam sitting in a single palm, whistling at the feat. They were a strong one. 

_‘Hardly hesitated.’_ Rozel thought, amused. 

He watched as they carefully picked around the innards of the muscle, mostly unenthusiastic himself. The chance of wild clams having a pearl in them was but a fraction of a percent—and for it to be far enough along in development to be worth something was even rarer. Still...he couldn’t help that small bit of wonder that swelled in his chest anytime a mollusk was shucked around him. There was always that small chance after all…

“Oh!” Ahnu softly noised, quietly amazement evident in their voice. Now _that_ was the sound of someone who’d found something, and it made Rozel’s eyebrows raise and breath catch as he waited for them to fish out their prize. 

Even under the duress of expectation, Rozel couldn’t help the quiet gasp he shared with them when they held up their hand—a pink pearl held between their index and thumb. 

“Incredible…” Rozel murmured, marveling at the find with Ahnu. The iridescent sheen of the rosy, crystalline nacre reflected the silver of the moonlight and the yellow of the lantern in such a captivating way. The precious gemstone appeared to be almost perfectly round from what Rozel could see of it, and it boasted an impressive size too, possessing a diameter about the same as the width of his thumbnail. He looked up to Ahnu, particularly pleased to have witnessed the find. He was just as impressed by their wide-eyed awe—silver and bright as the moon. “You’re quite the lucky one.”

They looked up to him then, almost as if for some form of approval—though, they didn’t seem to be fully aware of the compulsion. 

“Heh, you know, as much as I don’t like the place—” Rozel chuckled, reaching down to pet Daisy’s head. He wasn’t one to recommend gambling to others considering how much disdained the habit—and doubly so the local croupier—but he couldn’t resist the opportunity to jest. “With luck that good, you should visit Chance. I’ll bet that if you played a few rounds, you could put old Cloyne outta business!”

“Aren’t I too young?” Ahnu asked him, tilting their head to the side. 

They seemed to do that a lot, didn’t they? It certainly made it easier to read them, considering how atypically expressive—rather, inexpressive—they were. As far as Rozel observed, the few times they’d emoted to a contextually appropriate degree, it was always slight. Their resting face was always a doe-eyed neutral. 

“How should I know?” Rozel shrugged. “ _Are_ you underaged? I imagine that’s something only you’d be privy to.”

Ahnu’s eyes narrowed just a touch at that, which didn’t go unnoticed by Rozel—so much as deliberately unevaluated. He wasn’t sure what was running through their head, or what to make of them at all, but he’s already settled on taking a hands-off approach towards them. It just wasn’t his place to impose upon their life. It wouldn’t have been fair to them. 

He wouldn't repeat the mistakes of others from the past. 

“Anyways,“ he resumed, dismissing the prior subject with a wave of his hand, “we should be getting back, yeah?” His eyes shot back down to the split clam shells in their hand. “Oh, and about the clam meat—if you wanna just toss that into the ocean, some fish will—“

He didn’t get to finish what he was saying before Ahnu knocked back the innards of the mollusk, swallowing the contents of the clam, much to Rozel’s disbelief and gaping mouth—which was soon filled by his laughter. 

It was a quiet four hour walk back to Rozel’s hut, or at least, as quiet as Lurelin could be at night. Alongside the constant ambience of the ocean and seabreeze, the tropical climate of his home region promoted the excessive population of special beetles and various other insects—most of which were noisy as all hells after the sun dipped behind Tuft’s silhouette. He liked the mindless chittering though. It helped clear his mind, though that may not have been the case for everybody—like his two-legged company, for instance. 

As they trekked, he couldn’t help but occasionally peek over to where Ahnu matched his pace just the same as Daisy did on his other side. They didn’t look bored, exactly, so much as distracted. It was as if they were deliberating something for the entirety of the walk back to the village. He wasn’t sure whether or not that was a particularly good prospect, but they certainly looked serious. More so as time dragged on. 

They still had the hibiscus in their hair—tucked behind their _round_ ear. 

Soon—but also not soon enough—the trio (counting Daisy, of course) were at the porch of Rozel’s home, padding over to the stairs. Daisy closed in next to his legs, ready to help him up the stairs the moment he was done dawdling with Ahnu, who waited idly for him to do something—go inside, probably. There wasn’t much else to be said on the elder’s part, aside from goodnight. 

“Well, I hope you’ll sleep alright.” Rozel imparted, starting to make his way up the steps of his hut. He expected that to be it for the night, but yet again, they just had to go and surprise him. 

“—Whuh-wait.” 

Rozel—though confused—complied, turning back around to face them. Ahnu wouldn’t look at him. 

“...Yes?” Rozel prompted, patient. 

They were the picture of reluctance. Their mouth was barely parted, but it seemed as if their words wouldn’t come. Their eyes were narrowed, brows furrowed just a touch, gaze off to the side and studying something irrelevant on the ground as they busied one hand with tugging on the cloth strip of a wooden bangle on their other wrist—something he hadn’t noticed before just then. Had they always been wearing it, from the moment he’d first met them? It looked awfully familiar to him…

Then, they raised those same hands, and began to sign what they couldn’t speak. 

‘Were there—‘ A pause. Their eyes narrowed even further, deliberation gleaming in grey pools before they finally resumed, ‘—any other Sheikah from Lurelin?’

Now that was quite the question. 

“Pardon?” Rozel asked in kind, a bit lost in how vague the statement was. “I'm afraid I don’t…”

‘Lived here. Born here.’ Ahnu rapidly clarified, still not quite looking at the elder. 

Rozel pondered the full scope of the inquiry for a moment himself, but not necessarily regarding how he would answer it. Did he ever mention to them that Aein had been born here? Lived here, sure, but otherwise? He couldn’t remember. 

“...Yes, actually.” he finally confessed, his own brows furrowing some. “Aein had siblings, I think. Back when I was your age, my own elder’s used to talk about them some—or one of them at least. He never did himself, though.”

Ahnu finally met his eyes. That was what they wanted to hear—even if it didn’t look like it. Their face was scrunched up, just short of a wince.

“I can’t say for sure, seeing how I was born almost a decade after...after the Calamity…” he mused, bringing a hand up to stroke at his beard. “But I think…that they died during it. I think..." Again, Rozel eyed them oddly, and sad. "...all of his family did.”

It took Rozel half of a dreadfully long, painfully somber minute to realize he’d yet to answer their question. 

“I remember old Angie saying that one of them—his siblings—was like him.” he reminisced, actually finding it somewhat difficult to recall. He was so young then, and Angie had been gone for such a long time now. “Born here with him. A twin, I think.”

At that, Ahnu’s face became expressionless. It were as if apathy had washed over them, carrying away all residual emotion like beach litter on the waves. It was harrowing, truth be told, but it didn’t last long.

They bowed, abruptly—yet another thing about them that was Sheikah—and signed a quick ‘Farewell.’

And before Rozel could process their sudden transition, they’d turned tail, and jumped off of his porch.

* * *

“Where did that… What did you… How did you score a prize like that?!” Cloyne gaped with beady eyes blown wide, rubbing a hand across his barren scalp. “Can you introduce me to Lady Luck?”

Ahnu shrugged at the man impassively, storing away their newly acquired gold rupee into the Slate with the rest of their money. They weren’t particularly excited about the win. They only humored Cloyne’s silly little business venture on the recommendation of Rozel—in an effort to distract themself, more than anything else. 

“Well, you’re gonna keep going, right?” he asked. “Or do you admit defeat?”

They wouldn’t exactly call a 200 rupee profit “defeat,” but either way, they weren’t interested in his game. It wasn’t fun, seeing how it didn’t take any sort of skill—the name “Chance” was rather literal, it seemed. They shook their head, which earned a sigh from the man. 

“I hear you.” he responded, dejected. “Fair enough. Every good gambler knows there’s a time to walk away. Man, these next three days are gonna be tough. I hate it when my main clientele just up and leaves…” he bemoaned, referring to the sailors who’d left earlier in the evening. “But they gotta make that money somehow. Keeps this place running.”

Ahnu looked at him funny, signing, ‘This is a library.’

“Well, yeah. If you wanna be boring about it.” Cloyne curtly quipped. “What, you wanna check out a book? You should know, as a traveler, you can’t take anything here out of the Village.”

They sort of figured as much. It would have been problematic if any vagabond could grab a book and go off to wherever they pleased with it. The guarantee that the bind of knowledge on parchment would find its way back to the disorganized shelves of Lurelin was probably slight. It was for that reason that borrowing was out of the question for them now. 

‘Another time.’ they replied in Hand-Speak. ‘Maybe when this place is in order.’

“Tch. Picky, just like the elder.” Cloyne jabbed with a scowl.

If that was an insult, then it was hardly an effective one. Rozel was a good person in Ahnu’s eyes. 

They left the library-casino, and made their way down the stairs to the sandy road of the village, in the middle of which they halted. Only a couple dozen meters away was the Hotel, where they’d planned to spend at least one more night—at least, initially. Their sleep schedule was erratic at best, with unpredictable bursts of energy, or the far less accommodating bouts of fidgety restlessness punctuating the irregularities of their skewed circadian rhythm. 

Now, they felt that all too familiar compulsion to move—to leave. It was just time. 

They’d already turned left, and found themself at the West-most border of Lurelin’s territory by the time they’d come to this conclusion, marked by the dual bannered torch posts. The threshold. It was with only some deliberation, hesitation, that they moved to cross it. 

_“You should have said goodbye before we left.” Elle chastised. “I told you—we won’t be coming back.”_

Ahnu stopped in their tracks, just between those torch-lit stands—not quite past the imaginary line yet. The echo was far more prominent than the near-amorphous, spectral imprint their mind conjured of her, the Assailant. Her back, at least, as she attempted to pull them along—but also chide their departure? Or at least, the nature of it. 

When she turned to face them, her form was no better delineated, with all of her features blurred and so heavily distorted, like she was under the ripple of the murky sea water. She was further obscured by the dim of the night, with the hue of her attire—the same stealth gear Ahnu mirrored in adornment—and the cool tint of her dark skin and white hair mixing and muddling together in what little of the radial silver light there was to illuminate her, what with the moon having since slipped up and behind the overlooking cape. She was just so _blue._

All but those tired, red eyes of hers. 

Ahnu twisted around, tearing themself away from the apparition, only to find themself facing the village they were so intent on leaving, right there and then. It was so serene and sweet a sight, and so, so unbearable because of it. Their breaths became labored, wavering from shaky inhalation to piercing gasps as their influx of—panic? Certainly something dire but unspecific and hardly prompted—consumed them. The feeling was relatively mellow, more akin to the bitterness of separation, like how they felt when a weapon they’d been carrying for a particularly long time finally shattered under duress. 

—Just sad. Regrettable, even. 

They should have said goodbye to Rozel. Properly. Honestly. Maybe they should have given him the thunderblade they’d had strapped to their back ever since they’d found it. They certainly thought about it, but it was an action—a due-diligence—that just never came to pass. 

_“Look, it’s—“ Elle sighed. A hand reached out to lightly grasp their shoulder. “It’s alright. You’ll see him again soon, alright?”_

Ahnu’s hands dug into the eye on their chest. Of course she wasn’t talking about Rozel. This wasn’t even the right place. This event—this _memory_ —it took place at the North border of the sleepy, seaside village. 

_“Aein will come to visit us.” Elle soothed, running another hand up the small of their back in reassurance. She was so gentle. “He’s going to be working for the Kingdom now too, okay? We’ll see him back at Kakariko.”_

The phantom touches were never any sort of comfort to Ahnu. The tactile hallucinations were a tad uncanny at best, and absolutely harrowing at the worst, depending on their mood. They only ever served to exacerbate Ahnu’s emotions—be it the definitive neutrality most passersby perceived as their default, the all-encompassing confusion that was the lens they often saw the world through, or the gut wrenching ache that plagued them _so_ often. 

But it was different this time, if only a little. 

It was tender. Sympathetic. So soft and so contrary to how Ahnu perceived her (but they barely knew her—so why were they so steadfast on that impression of her?). Bewilderment washed away the gnawing malaise, leaving them with only a resigned, numb sort of calm. Even the confirmation of something they’d suspected since they woke up that morning didn’t faze them anymore. It just was what it was—

Something they didn’t understand (yet).

One of Ahnu’s hands snaked down to their belt’s pouch, snapping it open and retrieving it’s contents—the purple clam shells, as wide set as their fist, and a single pink pearl. They stared at the violet gradient of the calcium carapace. 

_“So pretty, right?” Aein enthused, cupping his hands around their own. “It’s my favorite color.”_

Ahnu swallowed thickly, residual tightness straining their throat. With the clam shells and pearl in one hand, they tugged the Slate off of their hip with the other, and tapped away at the interface. A green silk, drawstring bag materialized, draping over their occupied dominant hand—at least now, they had a use for the gift they’d been given back on Tuft Mountain. 

Withdrawing some twine as well, Ahnu placed the rosy pearl back between the shells, wrapping the entire thing in the string to secure it shut. They gently slid the clamshell into the bag, drawing it closed too, before fiddling with the Slate yet again. After half a minute of setting up a new register for the bag in their “Key Items” tab, it dissipated in that eerie flash of blue they’d grown so accustomed to, and reappeared in the form of a generated icon. 

They stared at the screen a bit longer, before clicking to edit the description of the bag. Typing quickly, they revised the blank title—

—“Treasures.”

Then, they set off into the night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please keep in mind, Ahnu is the type of protagonist that will--both deliberately but also inadvertently at times--avoid any and all prompt beats that pose the threat of forcing them to self-actualize. Or you know, advance the plot. This is a reoccurring element of their character and the overall story that you WILL see again, especially in the next few chapters--so join me then! Thanks for reading so far!


	21. Chapter 21--  Ruins and Rumors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu takes a detour down to the ruins nestled in a grove of Cape Cales, out past Lurelin village where they'd heard some talk about it. There, they learn a little more about the Zonai from an aspiring archeologist/anthropologist in the making.

It’d taken around five hours—including the time they’d spent taking a detour to investigate a rather large quarry cove, which turned out to have been inhabited by a lone luminous Talus—for Ahnu to reach Palmorae Beach. More specifically, the ruins. 

They crested over a small overhang of rock, some two to three hours before sunrise, and spotted a telltale orange glow that signified the touch of the ancient Sheikah upon the surface world. It appeared to have been a prominent pedestal amidst a medley of familiar, weathered architecture, and when they soared in closer on their paraglider, making to land on said platform, they soon spotted its twin that had been hiding behind the cliff that obscured it and the mass of the ruins they’d heard little about back in Lurelin. As soon as their feet hit the runic, fiery amber and metalloid ebony of the pedestal’s flat, they did a cursory visual sweep of the area—mostly for the purposes of spying any potential threats in the vicinity, though they did take note of a pitched mass of tarps tucked into the corner of the ruins, against what looked to be some sort of wall—before they saw fit to investigate to the satisfaction of a more benign curiosity of theirs. 

The first thing their eyes fell upon was the center-staged stone monument only a few meters away from where they stood—rather, what was left of it. 

It appeared to have been some sort of formerly circular tablet that was missing maybe 60 percent of its mass, with the jagged remnants of its eroded form perched on stone holds that elevated it a few centimeters off of a foundation of colossal bricks that were mostly submersed in the sands of the shore. They briefly ran their hand across part of its broken edge, which they were surprised to surmise as far newer—practically fresh—compared to the rest of the age-burnished stone. Most prominent were the inscriptions on the monument, which traveled along its circumference from end to broken end, rendered incomplete by the destruction. Of course, the most eye-catching element of the engravings were their gorgeous, teal glow.

Ahnu examined the pattern for quite some time, determining it to certainly be some form of scripture, but just not a written language that they could recognize. As they understood, there were only three types of commonly spoken, written, and generally utilized languages in modern Hyrule’s vernacular—Hylian, Gerudo, and Sheikah. The geometric carvings they kneeled before matched none of them, and Ahnu found themself incapable of reading the symbols, proving themself still only innately trilingual.

This had happened with another language once before—with the blocky and linear script that was messily graffitied onto the inner-facing walls of the Bridge of Hylia’s center piers, where most of the carvings were heavily worn down by what Ahnu could only assume was millennia worth of water erosion. The same script that occupied a mere two characters on the inscription of their paraglider-bangle. 

They attempted to tug it off their wrist, struggling to get it over the forearm guard plate of their stealth gear. They’d noticed a while ago that the thing sometimes had a habit of changing size, becoming however big or small that was required of it to fit on their wrist without falling off, often having to take into account their adornments when materializing. Though, the changes it underwent seemed keen on preserving its mass, warping the wood into a thinner ring when it appeared over anything more than their bare wrist. However, despite this neat attribute to the enchanted jewelry-contraption, they couldn’t exactly will it to grow, and with the contours of their guard plate as it stretched over the back of their hand making it unreasonably hard to pry the bangle off, they quickly gave up on the manual endeavor and instead just manifested the thing into their hand, only slightly embarrassed by the oversight. 

They eyed the inscription on the inside of their bangle (not for the third time, or even the dozenth), and looked at those two, simplistic characters, already aware that they were nothing like that inscribed in glowing shapes on the incomplete ring of the tablet. Still, they looked again at the words so neatly carved into the wood as a whole, reciting that of the passage that they understood in their head for the upteenth time (they’d lost track of how often they did it, on nights when they couldn’t easily find sleep, and the tips of their fingers traced the indents that meager firelight wouldn’t let them see).

_ ‘For our flower, [--]’ _

Ahnu traced the words with their thumb, eyes narrowing softly, trying and failing to  _ not _ think too deeply about it—to not attempt to ascribe meaning to the message. 

It was a gift from the king, after all. They didn’t feel much like they cared for his lingering sentiments.

Ahnu shook their head, dropping their bangle to the sand, after which it promptly reappeared on their wrist. It would do them well to not get distracted from their current fixation (and other, grander distraction).

They resumed their inspection of the shapes in the stone, descrying mostly triangles and rectangles and teeth looking things, with only the occasional circle or generally rounded character. Unable to make sense of the script, they moved on to assessing the nature of their glow, pulling a luminous stone out of their Slate to compare, much like they did with their earrings quite some time ago. Ahnu found the color to be relatively dissimilar in overall tint, with that of the luminous gem in their hands possessing a greener, mint-like brilliance that illuminated the surrounding area far better than the carvings, indicating the concentration of their luminescent properties. The shade of the dimmer glow that the engravings possessed was bluer, more of a cyan—just like said earrings of theirs, in the dark of the night. 

Ahnu’s brow furrowed some in concentration, and they placed down their luminous stone to bring both hands up to one ear. When they brought down one of the glowing rings in their palm, holding it up to the stone before them, they found the colors to match far more closely. It wasn’t just their tint, but their brightness too—rather, the lack thereof. Where the uncut luminous gem that rested by their legs on the carved stone brick where they kneeled shone brightly enough to permeate a gentle glow over a quarter-meters radius, the illumination of the words—and their earring—were only enough to stand out in the dark. Enough to be clearly seen, but not to reflect off of any surrounding surface. 

It was then that they’d heard a distant shuffling that came from the direction of the ruinous wall that was built into, or perhaps carved out of the clifface. They peeked over the monument, but couldn’t see the camp they’d noted prior, as an old column and the mound of sand that obscured the lot of the dilapidated architecture hid the mass of pitched tenting. Hardly a cause for worry, especially when a Hylian youth crept out from behind the old pillar and towards the monument where Ahnu eyed him.

He was clearly a resident of Lurelin, if the attire he wore was anything to go by, though it was a bit harder to make out much else about him in the dark. As he grew closer they saw he held a book under one arm, and the hold of an unlit lantern in his hand. His gait was a bit sloppy, his feet catching awkwardly on the intermittent brick beneath sand, indicative of the sleepiness written all over his face and pulling on his droopy eyes. His evident exhaustion was likely why it’d taken him so long to notice Ahnu, who stared at him from just behind the broken monument only five or so meters away. 

Upon seeing them, his thin eyes narrowed even more at their wide ones, pupils dilating as he tried to focus on Ahnu’s form, as if he were attempting to discern whether or not they were actually there. His eyes must not have been as sharp as theirs. They waved at him, which earned a yelp from the young man, who jolted and dropped his items. 

“Ahhh!” came his muted yell, more out of surprise than fear, as he could clearly see that Ahnu was just a person, and in fact a Hylian like himself. “Wha—don’t scare people like that!” He quickly chided while a single hand drifted up to grab at his his heaving chest, earning an apologetic sign from Ahnu, who drew a circle over their chest as he bent down to pick up his things while muttering, “Nearly gave me a heart attack—I’m too young to go like that…”

Ahnu watched the Hylian as he dusted some sand off his book, and twisted the spark switch on his lantern, casting an orange glow across a fairly small expanse of the ruins that had only known the moonlight up until that point. Getting a good look at him then, they recognized that he must have been the archeologist-wannabe Pikango and his nephew had been talking about—Garini. If not for the fact that he was camping out at the Palmorae ruins, then for his haircut, which the old painter had described as “a funny looking bowl-cut.”

‘Hello.’ Ahnu signed after clapping to get his attention, as if they were engaging in a normal conversation and that nothing of the prior had happened or particularly bothered them—at least not as much as it did of Garini. ‘The painter told me about you.’

Garini blinked at them, not quite comprehending what the complete stranger that was Ahnu was going on about. A fair response, all things considered. 

“Oh… you mean, uh, Pikango?” Garini asked, earning a nod from Ahnu. Well, the old man had a tendency to make strange company. “So he’s back in the village, huh?” 

‘Yes.’ Ahnu replied, still in Hand-Speak. ‘He mentioned that you study the ruins here.’ Garini perked up at that. 

“Oh!” he exclaimed, a bit more awake and excited now. “You mean—you mean the Zonai ruins here?”

So they  _ were _ Zonai. Ahnu had an inkling that such was the case from what little they’d glimpsed of the ruins, though admittedly they paid less attention to much else as soon as their sight fell upon the stone monument. It was the most eye catching element of the location, after all, but when Ahnu stood up and looked around once again, they took note of all the things that supported the claim. From the familiar build of the crumbling columns that were carved with griding patterns and striped snakes, to the colossal bricks in the sand at their feet that were embellished with the tailed swirl of the enigmatic people. Frankly, it was surprising that they hadn’t processed their surroundings more fully up until that point. 

Glancing back down to the tablet and the writing at their feet, the obvious thought had followed.

_ ‘Was this their language?’ _

* * *

“You won’t believe how long I’ve waited for someone to ask about these ruins!” Garini gushed, flipping through his book with one hand while the other held a skewered fish Ahnu had offered him out over the fire the two sat around, in front of the very monument Ahnu had so intensely examined. It was a bit brighter now, what with the sun rising unseen on the other side of the cape cliffs that partitioned the pair from the West. “Everyone in the village had been sick of hearing about it for ages!”

Ahnu couldn’t understand why. The subject sparked an endless amount of intrigue in themself personally, but perhaps it was due to Lurelin’s proximity to the jungles of Faron, and of course the altar built around the monument in the very grove that the two Hylians ate breakfast at. Over-exposure for uncountable generations had likely bred passivity and disinterest towards the topic. 

“I’ve—I’ve been learning to, uh—“ Garini brought in his hand from the fire, nearly smacking himself in the face with the semi-roasted porgy on the stick he held as he attempted to turn the page he was on. Reading while talking clearly wasn’t a strong suit of his, as the Hylian’s attention was a tad too split for him to string together an unbroken sentence, but Ahnu continued to listen appreciatively regardless. “To read! Yeah, I’ve been learning to read their language!” he finally finished, eyes momentarily darting up to Ahnu before back down at the page, and then over to the monument at his side. Ahnu traced his line of sight, back down to the geometric characters. “No one’s bothered to—to pick it up, cause, uh, it’s a dead language, you know?”

Ahnu just stared at the engravings as he spoke, acutely aware of their dimming glow. It may have just been the comparative brightness of the growing daylight—but no, the cyan of the shapes and symbols was certainly, gradually fading. They reached out to touch the inscription, fingers ghosting over a crackled glassy feeling surface instead of that of rugged stone. 

“Hm?” Garini noised, watching them quizzically, before recognition spread across his face. “Oh, the glow? Yeah, I wake up a few hours before dawn every day to catch a glimpse of it. It’s caused by some sort of special glaze the Zonai used in special forms of architecture. It’s a combination of crushed luminous sand and additional cool toned pigments that would supplement an even texture in the end result, which would then be fired traditionally or with the use of elemental tools that were enhanced with accelerative fire magic. Kinda like that sword on your back.” Garini pointed with his skewered fish to the thunderblade they wore on their mismatched baldric, which didn’t fit with the rest of their Sheikah ensemble. “But with fire, I mean. Yeah.”

‘Why?’ Ahnu signed, unhelpfully vague in their questioning. Garini managed to sort out what they’d meant relatively quickly however. 

“You mean about the luminous glaze? Why they used it?” He asked, earning a nod from Ahnu. He dropped his book into his lap, using his now free hand to gently rove the surface of the broken tablet while he composed an answer. “Well, as far as I know…” he started, hesitant as the topic broached the flimsy foundation of theorizing, “Luminous ore was...sacred? Yeah, it was sacred to the Zonai. Do you know anything about the stone?”

Ahnu had yet to discuss the topic with another individual, but as for what they knew personally? There was a description of the gem type in the Slate, though it was one that read as more speculative than factual, outside of the mentions of the luminescent mineral being a decent accessory in jewelry or used as a base for interesting styles of clothing...

‘The glow is—‘ Ahnu paused, not for their inability to relay the words necessary in Hand-Speak, but more due to a hesitancy borne from genuine...sensitivity, perhaps? They resumed quickly, speaking now, “—lit by the spectral energy of souls of the dead. Some people believe that, yes?”

“Ah—uh, that’s right.” Garini agreed with only slightly widened eyes, brushing off their sudden vocality relatively easily. “The Zonai were actually credited with discovering the ore type, if the records back in the village are to be believed.” He gestured down to the book that lay open in his lap, which Ahnu now eyed just as intensely as they had the stone monument in question. “It was hypothesized by ancient Sheikah that the luminous mineral acts as a sort of conduit for spirits to see into the living world, or perhaps even inhabit. Seers and mediums used the stuff to communicate with the dead or just plain other wordly, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone with that kind of know-how nowadays. It’s like, one of the few practices that got quashed after…” 

Ahnu abruptly threw two pointer fingers downwards, before splaying their hands dramatically towards their left, with the clawing fingers of their left hand facing upwards and their right hand facing down, before they dragged both hands to the right, rotating them so that their fingers now reached in the opposite, vertical orientations. It was a simple word. One few dared to say, apparently. 

‘Calamity.’ Ahnu signed, much to Garini’s discomfort. 

“Yeah. That.” He breathed, quick in his confirmation. His eyes fell back upon his book. “Anyways, the Zonai were all about spiritual stuff. They might’ve also been the first people to implement luminous gems in masonry, clothing, and jewelry—but only for special purposes.”

Ahnu perked up at that, quickly clapping to get Garini’s attention yet again. As he looked up at them, they removed one of their earrings (careful to keep the lot of their ear hidden by the stray locks that framed their face and either side of their head, though they weren’t entirely sure why it mattered). Holding it out to him on one palm, while that of their other attempted to shield it from the growing light of the early morning that chased away its dim as-is glow, their efforts garnered a wide eyed expression from the aspiring archeologist, who let out a small gasp at the sight. 

“Is—is that…” he gaped while pointing at it with his free hand, which he pulled off of the similarly luminescent scripture of the monument. “That’s made of luminous ore, right? Can I have a closer look at it? I promise I'll be careful.”

As reluctant as they were to part with their jewelry for even a moment, brows furrowing at the mere thought, Ahnu ultimately decided that they could trust Garini with something so precious for a few moments. He seemed like a good person after all, and was happily indulging them in their curiosity towards the Zonai—at least, as much as they were humoring his desire to talk about the subject. After a short pause, Ahnu reluctantly held out their earring towards him, depositing the tiny blue hoop into his open palm. 

“Incredible…” Garini muttered, holding it up to his face, closing one eye as he focused in on the surface of it with the other. “You know, each race had adapted a means of using luminous ore for embellishment…” he idly mused aloud as he continued to examine the jewelry. “I believe it was Gerudo who invented, or at least reinvented and even improved upon the art of blowing the stuff into glass, and making glaze and even cloth pigments with crushed luminous stone.”

Oh? Could their earrings have been of Gerudo make then? 

“Us Hylians and the Rito are particularly fond of it as just jewelry, though.” Garini continued. “But I mean, the Zora have been using the stuff to supplement their architecture for millennia now! The Zora’s domain is practically coated in luminous glass and encrusted with bits of gem here and there…”

Not  _ that _ was something to imagine. It was maybe for the first time that Ahnu began to regret not visiting the Zora’s Domain (for less than serious reasons, that is). They wondered just what a kingdom like that would look like in the night, cast in a beautifully spectral glow so entirely. Then they began to wonder what the Zora’s Domain looked like at all. 

Garini interrupted that thought with something even more perplexing. 

“I don’t think the Gorons care much for the stuff, but like, they don’t really seem to care for much for any kind of jewels, you know?” Garini quipped. 

Ahnu didn’t know that. In fact, they didn’t even know what a Goron was. Mostly. They feel like they might have recognized one if they’d seen them. Or maybe if they could just talk about it some. They weren’t given the chance to ask, though.

“But I think that only the Gerudo are keeping the art of luminous attire and ornamentation alive nowadays. That’s what Mugs says, anyways.” He added, holding Ahnu’s earring back out to them. They quickly plucked it from his palm. “You can tell when the jewelry is made by Gerudo, like yours is. They tend to melt down limestone and soda ash with not only crushed luminous stone, but also their desert sand mixed with pulverized sapphire.” He brought up his fish from out over the fire, taking a bite out of it’s cooked belly and swallowing before adding, “That’s why the glow of your earrings is bluer than raw luminous ore. Kinda like the glaze on the monument here, actually. I’ll bet those earrings are a light blue in the day, huh?”

Ahnu just looked down at the hoop pinched between their fingers, staring down the fading glow while attempting to process the influx of information from the wellspring of knowledge that was Garini. As much as they struggled to follow along his rapid pace of euclidation, they rather enjoyed learning as much as they could from him about anything he was willing to talk about. They just enjoyed learning in general. 

Speaking of learning…

‘Can I see that book?’ Ahnu asked in return after reaffixing their earring, pointing down to the bind of leather and parchment in Garini’s lap. They’d be lying if they said their permissiveness of Garini handling their jewelry wasn’t fueled by a ploy to get their hands on one of his own possessions. ‘It is about—‘ Ahnu put their newest sign that Garini had taught them to use, curling their pointer finger and making two small circles, before straightening the same finger and making a larger, counter-clockwise circle. ‘Zonai, correct? I will also be careful.’

“Oh this?” Garini remarked, holding up the book in one hand, while taking another bite out of his fish. “Sure thing! Gotta warn you though, this is volume two of the Zonai linguistics manuals. Won’t make much sense without the first book.”

Ahnu eagerly reached out for the book as Garini handed it off to them, quickly pulling it in towards themself and flipping through it. They stopped on the occasion page, reading a short passage before turning it to look at an ink rendition of symbols and supposed words that appeared to be consistent with the script carved into the stone beside them and the fire. The book wasn’t exactly a dictionary, however—more like a study and dissection of the linguistic patterns of the Zonai people, written out in Hylian common. They frowned at the revelation, earning a light laugh from Garini.

“Ha ha! Hey, I told you!” Garini joked, waving his cooked fish around. “Learning languages is hard! This book is all about syntax and grammar. Apparently, the Zonai used to conjugate words similarly to Gerudo, and you can read a bit about that on page 42 through 68.”

Ahnu flipped back through the pages to get at those he’d cited. Sure enough there were comparisons drawn between Gerudo and this Zonai language, but Garini was accurate about how difficult the information would be to understand and retain without the context of the implied previous volume. Still, it was interesting to see comprehensively written Gerudo in and of itself, considering their only exposure to the like thus far had been engravings in metal. 

“I’ve been trying to learn the language for about two years now, all to decode this here monument—“ Garini said in between mouthfuls, “—so you wouldn’t  _ believe _ my shock when that earthquake a few months back straight up broke the thing into pieces.”

That made Ahnu’s eyes widen a touch, and they looked up from a demonstrative passage of filler Gerudo to stare down the Hylian, slightly incredulous. They’d known the breakage on the tablet was newer than all else, but  _ that _ new? Garini seemed to notice their shock. 

“Oh, yeah. Do you remember it?” he asked. “I heard from some of the senior fisherman and traders back in the Village that some places, like Hateno, barely felt it. I guess us folks on the coast must’ve been hit a little harder.” Garini paused for a few beats, face pinching into a slightly confused expression as if he were considering something for the first time. “...Though…some merchants from deeper in the mainland say it was pretty bad in central Hyrule too. It might’ve hit different regions with differing levels of intensity? That’s…kind of strange now that I think about it…”

Even stranger would have been the source of said earthquakes. Plenty of Hyruleans across the land were aware of, or at least starting to catch on to the notion that the raising of the towers and activation of the long dormant Shrines had something to do with the ‘natural’ disaster. Ahnu had spoken to a fair amount of travels that seemed keen on discussing the latest theories regarding such a coincidence—and frankly, it was a conversation that they didn’t want to have again. 

‘What happened to the broken portion? Where did it go?’ Ahnu quickly inquired in Hand-Speak. It was a deflection, but also a genuine question all the same—and a fair one too. While they could believe that an earthquake of ambiguous magnitude could destroy the tablet, they weren’t so sure that it could carry away the resultant fragments. ‘Where are the pieces?’

“Hm? Oh, uh. Well, the crazy thing is—“ Garini replied, somewhat sheepishly, as if he’d expected a fair level of skepticism from Ahnu, “—the day the earthquake happened, I was actually back in town. Restocking on camping supplies, yeah? So the ground starts shaking for a bit, and I make the hike back out here as quick as I could to scope the damage.” he recalled, absently running a hand over the unbroken perimeter of the monument. “And get this. Half a dozen hours later, I get here, and not only is the monument straight up shattered, but I catch a bunch of Stal-monsters dragging away one of the pieces!”

That sounded like...unusual behavior for monsters—at least so far in that Ahnu could assume that there was some sort of comprehensive intent behind the action. Ahnu wasn’t dull, themself. They could recognize a stage and setup when it was so obviously presented to them. There was a reason that there were two ancient Sheikah pedestals posed out in front of the decisively Zonai Ruins—and what was written on the broken tablet likely held the answer. 

They pushed aside the odd coincidence of the collaboration for the time being, too preoccupied with the implications of sabotage. 

But then again, to assume that the acquisition of fragments of the monument was a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the progress of some ambiguous hero from reclaiming the gifts of old from a set of ancient races was a bit of a stretch. Monsters weren’t that smart. At least, not the lot of them. Not to mention that those things would have no idea about the significance of Zonai culture or Sheikah technology—

—But there were also the Towers to consider. 

So far half of the few they’ve activated had been surrounded by creatures of dark magics, guarding them against…

Ahnu shook that thought out of their head, raising their hands to sign, ‘Monsters are strange. They like to collect weird things. Shiny things and even dead things. 

“Oh yeah?” Garini mused, grimacing some. “Guess they liked the glow of the luminous glaze, huh? Well, anyways, I chased off the Stal’s with a harpoon, and even downed one of em’—guess all my fishing training’s been paying off!” he quipped, priding himself in the feat. “But, uh. I was kinda late. Whatever other fragments there are have been dragged away someplace I haven’t tracked yet. One of the pieces—the one I intercepted—is nearby—“ he pointed a little further down Palmorae Beach, Southeast, before muttering, “Too heavy for me to carry though…”

“Hmm.” Ahnu hummed, looking over behind themself towards where Garini motioned. They looked back down to the book in their lap, flipping through it backwards one last time before landing on the cover page. Before they could shut the book, their mind made up as for what they’d do in the immediate, they read over the rather clinical title inscribed,  _ ‘Zonai Studies: Part 7—Linguistics: Volume 2’ _ . 

Below that they read something else—something they assumed to be a name.

‘Terra Sheik.’

* * *

“Seriously, how the hells can you carry that thing?!” Garini asked for the third time as he followed along besides them, incredulous. “It’s gotta be twice your weight!”

Dropping the stone fragment onto the sands before the rest of the tablet, Ahnu used their now unburdened shoulders to shrug, before signing, ‘Is that a lot?’

“Wha—is that a lot?! It’s like, 150 kilograms!” he sputtered, eyes blown wide. “And you carried it around like it was a wicker basket full of crab!”

Ahnu could only guess that he meant to imply that they were relatively unencumbered by the task—which was accurate. They shrugged again. Garini just gaped at them for a moment, before shaking off his bewilderment and focusing on the task at hand. 

“Okay, whatever.” he brushed off, kneeling down before the fragment. “I can work with this. Give me a second…” He pulled out a pencil and some already scribbled on parchment from an inner pocket on his vest, finding a blank space for himself to write, before adding to the mess of translations and notes on the page. Ahnu squatted a good two meters away from him, watching him work through the process of refining the passage available to him. Unfortunately, they struggled to glimpse meaning from any of his notes, finding his handwriting to be even worse than their own. It was borderline illegible. 

“Hrmm. Hey, uh, can you do me a favor?” Garini asked, looking up from his notes to Ahnu, who tilted their head. “Can you lift the fragment again, and put it up on the rest of the monument? Gently, I mean. I wanna see where it fits into the part I have translated. It’ll help me determine the tense, and of course the overall message.”

Ahnu readily complied, hunkering over the monument piece to get a good hold on either of its jagged sides, lifting it up with themself as they rose from the ground. They shuffled closer to the intact half of the tablet, and as gently as they could manage, they endeavored to slip one arm out from under a fractured edge that looked like it might have come off of the right-most end of the monument’s breakage—only to find that it didn’t fit. They frowned, and swung over to the left, but that side didn’t fit either. 

“Oh no…” Garini murmured to himself as he watched Ahnu deposit the fragment back onto the sand, before they turned to him to shake their head. “Ugh. I was afraid of this. I knew the translation wasn’t making sense…shouldn't have put off copying down the engravings for so long…” He rubbed at the back of his neck, staring down the piece of monument with a scowl, before sighing. 

“Alright, so here’s the thing.” he stated in a matter-of-fact tone. “This means that there are at least two other pieces of puzzle. Now, I don’t know where they are, so I’m kind of at a loss for what to do—BUT.” Garini emphasized, raising a single pointed finger. “I’ve still got a decent portion of the passage translated as is, so as thanks for your help, I could share that with you—if you’d like, that is.”

Ahnu nodded swiftly, their small smile hidden by their mask. They were already particularly invested in this archeological venture, and to have even a partial result so readily available was exciting!

“Okay! Cool! Just let me…” He retrieved his slip of paper from the sands, and dusted it off. “Just, ah, keep in mind it’s a rough translation, okay? Won’t make sense until I’ve got the rest…” Nodding along in understanding, Ahnu’s generally encouraging demeanor seemed to assure Garini that he wouldn’t make an absolute fool of himself with a less-than adequate product of his linguistic studies. “Okay, here it goes:”

He knelt down to the fragment to trace what little he could of it’s available inscription counter-clockwise. 

**_“When the_ ** —I don’t know, cause it’s cut off, and so in the next visible word—“ He shuffles over to the monument, which he continued to trace while looking down at his notes.  **_“—place and kneel_ ** —though, this word could be knelt, I’m still not sure of the tense— **_in_ ** —something? Again the next word is cut off, and it would kind of determine whether or not the preceding one actually means ‘inside’,” His attention returned to the fragment, which he pointed to, “—and then we have another gap and cut off word— **_itself.”_ **

Garini peeked up over his notes, and found an understandably confused Ahnu crouched over the same piece of monument as himself, gears likely turning in their head. Their brows were furrowed, and their fingers were ghosting over the engravings. The script had stopped glowing quite a while ago. 

“Heh, yeah. Sorry. Told you it wouldn’t make sense.” Garini plopped himself down onto the sand, cross-legged. “Figures. Just when my linguistic skills are up to snuff, the thing went and broke. Guess I’ll be spending all my free time locating the other pieces instead of reading books or inspecting the ruins.”

Ahnu eyed him curiously from across the tablet. ‘Don’t you have a job?’ they signed, putting forth no real thought or general social finesse into their nosy inquiry. The question was without judgement, as evident by Ahnu’s softly neutral countenance, but the young Hylian man clearly assumed a less than impressed pretense to their musing.

“Well, yeah—buh-but also no!” Garini stammered out defensively, head shooting up, embarrassment making his cheeks flush. “I mean, I’m pretty young, like you. Almost adult, but not quite, yeah?. I’m training in a couple different fields before I settle on an occupation.” he reasoned, adding, “While half of us back in the village are career-fisherman, there are plenty that tend to the local infrastructure or tourist appeals. The second most important set of occupations actually had a lot to do with maintaining our crop grove on the Gogobi Shore.”

Ahnu vaguely remembered passing the area on their way to the ruins. They’d spied several rows of palm, banana, and cocoa trees in the distance, as well as some unspecific grain variants that were probably genetically cultured to withstand the ecosystem of the beachfront—all neatly sectioned and fenced from each other. They hadn’t given it much thought at the time, but it was rather obvious that the plots had been parts of a tropical farm in hindsight. 

“Ideally, I’d be working at the library, but Cloyne doesn’t want any help…” he grumbled to himself, a tad bitter, before continuing “ But there’s also the quarry we’ve got going in Gama Cove—that’s where we mine out turquoise and Jade—but a Luminous Talus started nesting there a couple years ago.” Garini expanded. “We can usually dig around the thing, and since those big ol’ rocks are pretty chill, they hardly seem to mind as long as we don’t get too close. It’s gotten a bit more finicky in the last couple of months though, so mining’s been slow. Guess the earthquake must have ticked it off.” The Hylian chuckled to himself some, before reasoning, “Fine by me, honestly! I can barely lift a sledgehammer! I bet someone as strong as you would have no trouble doing that though.”

Ahnu flushed at the remark, having interpreted the statement as a compliment, cutting off all thoughts relating to the Luminous Talus—which they’re certain they’d killed on the way to the ruins. They felt compelled to return some form of encouragement.

‘I think you’re very knowledgeable.’ Ahnu signed, eyes darting to Garini’s for a few moments to convey sincerity. ‘You’d make a very good archeologist.’

“Whuh—oh, uhm. Tha-thanks…” Garini muttered, eyes a little wider, clearly taken aback by the commendation. He ran a hand through his hair, the other reaching out for the book he’d all but forgotten about in light of trying to translate the monument, dragging it into his lap. Looking down to it’s dark green, blank cover, he thumbed the spine idly. “That actually means a lot to me…but to be honest…” he trailed off, opening the book to its cover page, where the clinical title and author’s name were written. “Pretty much everything I know about the Zonai comes from the books in the library—almost all of which was written by a single person.”

Well, that sounded unreliable. If a large portion of facts and records regarding a long untouched subject were studied and compiled almost entirely by a lone individual, it was safe to assume that the scholarly journals of said person should fall under something of a  _ highly _ critical lens. Then again, the novels regarding the language of the Zonai had been accurate enough that Garini could ascribe a loose meaning to the scripture on the stone monument, as situationally incomprehensible as it was...

“Teaching yourself a dead language from second-hand accounts sounds difficult.” Ahnu said aloud, voice gentle but firm. They didn’t quite know why, but they didn’t like it when others minimized their aptitude and ambitions. They wanted the Hylian to be proud of his skill and competency. “I think that would indicate that you have potential to do so much more in regards to your chosen field of expertise.”

“Ah, I—you really think so?” Garini asked, genuinely touched by their words. When Ahnu nodded, his eyes fell back down to the cover page, which he passively looked down at—more like right on  _ through _ —in silence. “...That’s...you sound a lot like the elder, you know that?” he abstracted, a small, sad smile gracing his thin lips. 

“Rozel?” Ahnu asked.

Garini’s face twisted into something—something  _ pained _ —and his cerulean eyes darted up caught Ahnu’s grey ones, a not disingenuous but also not particularly happy smile still pulling at the corners of his mouth. 

“Hah, well, yeah. Him too.” he affirmed. 

Oh.  _ Oh.  _

He meant the other one. The one that had passed at some point in the past—the recent past, likely. 

“You know, the late elder was a Sheikah, too.” Garini numbly added, casting his head out over his shoulder, down towards the entirety of Palmorae Beach and the Faron Sea. 

Again, with this. Ahnu was too quickly becoming used to being referred to as such. Most travelers were disinterested enough in the implications of their attire to pass over the topic of Ahnu’s assumedly ambiguous lineage—or perhaps they just weren’t as invested, if there was any difference. Unlike the average mainland Hylian, the people from Lurelin obviously had some intimate recollection of certain things that regarded the shadow people, even if the association was established through only a single, deceased individual of unclear significance. It was obviously a sensitive, vulnerable topic though—Ahnu was empathetic enough to sense the like—and so they wisely resisted the urge to correct the assumption. 

“He really encouraged my love of archeology. He used to let me check out as many books as I wanted from the Library.” He continued, grumbling under his breath, “Cloyne only lets me take two at a time—and only one if I’m gonna take it out of the Village.”

Ahnu actually found that to be a relatively fair arrangement, all things considered. Again, that was another thing they wouldn’t say aloud, especially what with Garini having gone quiet again. He looked out over the horizon as it stretched into the unseen, the blue of the sky and ocean practically merging together in a brilliant azure gradient. 

“He was...pretty used to people of the village asking him about all things ‘Sheikah’.” Garini began again, not seeming to take well to the brief silence, nor was he prepared to move on from the subject he’d engaged. “He never said so, but I think he was tired of that being one of his most defining traits. I think that was why he was so supportive of my interest in the Zonai.”

Ahnu stared out towards the ocean with him, finding themself increasingly anxious as the one-sided conversation stretched on—and yet they listened so very intensely, hands fisting into the sand on either side of them. 

“The only other person he’d ever known to take an interest in the old tribe was his grandmother. I’m pretty sure she was the one who’d written every book there was about them in the library.” he shared. “I think that she—“ He abruptly stopped, face scrunching up and twisting into an ugly wince. He peered over at Ahnu, who only watched him from their peripheral. Garini then shook his head. 

“Do you know the Sheikah word for ‘Zonai’?” Garini deflected. 

The rapid shift in topics confused them some, but they still refused to comment. There was nothing they could have added to the previous conversation. Nothing they could have said. Nothing they wanted to. Ahnu turned their head over to him, blinking slowly, thoughtfully, before shaking their head. 

Garini sighed. 

“That was the only question I’d ever asked him that had anything to do with the Sheikah.” He absently remarked. “I wish I’d asked him a bit more, though.” Garini’s eyes met Ahnu’s so directly for the second and last time that late morning.

“The Sheikah called them the ‘Lomei’.”

* * *

They’d said goodbye to Garini when he’d departed back to Lurelin around noon, not lingering around the ruins for long themself after concluding that they just wouldn’t be able to solve whatever surface-world puzzle there was in place that so dutifully concealed the Shrine. 

It was only a few hours of mountain climbing later that Ahnu had found themself about halfway up Cape Cales, having backtracked enough to a spring that rested on the level ground that overlooked the Gama Cove. The waters fed into a secure, decently large cave with an interior that was practically  _ coated _ in easily mineable ore deposits. They happily blew the ore apart with a few rune bombs, picking through the debris for gems and other useful minerals. 

After fishing and bathing in the waters, Ahnu settled into the depths of the cave, nestled on it’s relatively small inner shore, cooking some common Hylian Bass over a fire after rubbing it and a few mushrooms down with salt. They still enjoyed the fish, but they passively noted that the taste of bass was a tad comparatively blander than that of porgy. They drank from one of their waterskins, the water as cool and sweet as it had been when they’d collected it only the day prior—all thanks to the qualities of preservation the Slate possessed. 

Ahnu laid down their worn canvas onto the soft moss of the cave’s floor, looking out over the waters as they stretched beyond the mouth of the deep cavern, reflecting the afternoon sky in its still, glassy surface. It wasn’t particularly late, but they hadn’t slept for well over a day, and one of those intermittent crashes they were yet to acclimate to fell over them, leaving them awash with an all too sudden bout of exhaustion. It became a struggle to differentiate their waking thoughts from their slowly encroaching dreams, which settled in over their mind scape like a fine mist, making all caught up in the haze obfuscated yet so strangely vivid. 

When they thought about the ruins again, and the mysteries and Shrine it withheld, they could surreally imagine themself there, walking amongst the salt-kissed stone on the seaside yet again. They closed their eyes, and imagined raising the Shrine—somehow—and opening it just the same as they had all those times before. But when they moved the Slate over the pedestal, the ground shook, and instead of the slabs on the Shrine folding inwards, the brick of the wall behind it—the one against the cliff face that looked so suspiciously there to hide something—fell away, one by one. They investigated the opening briefly, finding no light could penetrate its mouth, and still, for some reason, they felt compelled to step inside, and they did—

They blinked, and it was suddenly nighttime. Their thoughts  _ had _ turned to dreams, however brief they’d felt to be, and those same dreams beckoned to them again. They distantly acknowledge that the sounds of a small group of ducks shuffling about just outside the cave, settling in for the night, must have been what had alerted them awake, if only barely and without prudence. The air was dim and cool, and instead of the late day sky, the spring now displayed a mirrored menagerie of stars. 

They almost, sort of,  _ maybe _ recognized one of the constellations before their sight fell back away to their slumber—a pretty little bundle of stars that looked somewhat like the slanted and lopsided furcula of a bird still alight behind their eyelids. It was backwards and deformed by the angle, they absently registered, but when they imagined it the other way around and a bit longer…

_ ‘Kind of like a man with his arms out?’ _ Ahnu thought, lashes fluttering lightly. It was silly—an abstraction they weren’t awake enough to examine, let alone pursue. A thought that sprung up from nowhere. It was just a splitting string of bright stars. It looked nothing like that.

Nothing at all...

* * *

_ “Ah! Oh, so do you see that one there?” he exclaimed, pointing with the hand that was occupied with the dimly lit lantern. They attempted to follow the path of his finger, but just like with all the rest, they struggled to ascertain just what strange formation of stars he was directing them towards. “Gaepores the Beloved. He serves as a representation of devout love towards Goddess Hylia.” _

_ “I don’t see it.” they complained, tugging on the hand that held their own.  _

_ Aein laughed, looking down on their unamused face with a sweet smile. And just like with all the rest before, he knelt down behind them, pressed his cheek against theirs as they laughed along with him, and grabbed their hand, using their own finger to trace the constellation from their perspective.  _

_ “Do you see him now?” Aein asked. They could feel that smile of his on the side of their face.  _

_ “He looks like a wishbone.” they giggled, tugging their wrist out of his loose grip. “Not a person.” _

_ “Aw, whaaat?” Aein playfully lamented, standing back up to his full height. He took their hand again, and led them further along the trail towards Palmorae beach “That’s totally a Hylian. Look at him, up there—arms all outstretched like he’s gonna give you a big ol’ hug!”  _

_ “Nuh-uh!” they retorted, swinging Aein’s arm around dramatically as the two of them walked, in time with each step. He chuckled, but said little else on the matter. They looked up to the sky as the two of them walked for a few more minutes, their eyes darting between the Hylian in the stars and the Sheikah in the Moonlight.  _

_ Aein was so pretty at nighttime, when the sky was clear. The silver light made his dark skin and white hair look almost blue. Just like Ahma.  _

_ “We’re almost there.” he said, taking a small detour to drag them up an outcrop of rock—a ledge that overlooked the beach they were going to camp at. “Look down there, do you see?” He held the lantern out towards the right, where their young eyes could barely make out the sight of dark columns in the distant and dark. “Those pillars down there?” _

_ “Zonai?” they asked. He simply nodded. The stacks of carved stone looked a bit shorter than the ones they’d seen in Faron with their parents. As soon as their eyes adjusted though, the reason why became readily apparent. They were all mostly buried in sand, which filled the abscess of the cliff. The two of them went around the hill, and Aein even let them use his Fisherman Shield to ride down the hill as he followed behind at a relaxed pace.  _

_ They laughed on the way towards the sand dune where the buried pillars were, and continued even as they glided past it all—their glee only abruptly cut short by some large, angular rock in the sand they couldn’t tell apart from the mix of gravel from the cape and sand from the beach. They hit its barely unearthed, unusually flat edge a tad too squarely, catching and flipping their shield-turned-sledboard and sending them forward into the sands. The added momentum the burden on their back gave them by virtue of its sheer weight was a bit too much to allow proper maneuvering, so they wouldn’t have been able to catch themself— _

_ —But then Aein was there, faster than anything, catching them himself. They barely registered anything past their weightlessness, before they were in strong arms, and then back to standing upright on the ground. They blinked, just barely catching sight of a few apparition talismans before they fizzled away into magical sparks and nothingness.  _

_ “Whoa, there!” he chimed, cool as the night air yet so very full of life and care. He pat their small shoulders, standing before them, just a bit bent over. “Let’s try not to trip over any bricks now, yeah? _

_ “I didn’t see it.” they blurted out, completely unbothered by the events as they’d transpired. They’d fallen before, at greater speeds and heights, so they weren’t particularly shaken. They did wish, not for the first time, that they didn’t have to take the sword with them wherever they went. _

_ “Yeah, well it was hidden by the sands.” he reasoned, walking past them and back over to where his shield lay, beckoning for them to follow. When he knelt down, so did they. His hands brushed over the offending stone that had thrown them, before digging into the sand and loose rock that evidently obscured the lot of it. They helped him dig, and soon enough, the two had uncovered a colossal brick—something clearly man made. Aein supplemented. “The sands hide a lot, you know.” _

_ They eyed the tailed swirl on its flat.  _

_ “Most of the ruins out here are covered by that mound of sand over there.” he added, turning to look out over the unusual dune. They followed his gaze, and then himself when he’d stood back up and walked on over to the pile of sediment. “I read about the Zonai in those books I showed you. The author cited these ruins here being the closest to Lurelin.” He stopped at a column, which he was taller than with just how much of it was submerged, and put his hand on one of its corners. Turning back to them, he smiled. “Pretty neat, right?” _

_ They nodded, holding out one of their own hands to trace the head of a snake carved into the stone with their fingertips. _

_ “You know…” Aein began, head turning to look past the column, along the cliff face that stretched to the back of the grove in the cape-side. When they looked themself, they saw the upper edge of what could have been any number of things sticking out of the rock. A wall, or a frame of sorts.  _

_ They couldn’t help but think of it as something a bit more exciting—like a large gateway.  _

_ “There might just be a lot more of the Zonai under the earth below our feet.” he continued. “Some say that the ones who disappeared—who took everything but the statues and stone they left behind—“ he looked down at them. “—that they fled out of sight, all at once, practically overnight.” _

_ They blinked up at him, uncomprehending. His soft smile looked a little strange.  _

_ “They say that the Zonai went beneath the ground. That they’re still there, hiding—waiting.” _

_ They shivered at the thought. It seemed weird. Exciting, too, but so very disturbing.  _

_ “What do you think, Ahnu?” he asked them. “Where do you think the Zonai went?” _

* * *

“I don’t…?” Ahnu faintly answered, eyes fluttering open, only to find themself staring out over the cave pool, into the reflection of the bedim morning sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo, I'm back! I got caught up in some IRL stuff for a bit but now I can resume writing at the speed of sound!
> 
> But anyways, yeah. Zonai. Neat stuff, right? And it seems as if weird dreams are about to become a stable of Ahnu's new-life. Maybe they opened some kind of floodgate? Strange. Even stranger will be the next chapter. Hope you'll stick around to see it! Thanks for reading!
> 
> (Also, if you want to see a depiction of Aein, you can check out what he looks like over at my Tumblr)


	22. Chapter 22--  Trials and Tribulations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu makes the unfortunate decision of trying to complete two Shrines in a single day, and is forced to contemplate things regarding the nature of trials, the Monks who made them, and the Goddess that ordained them.

When the Monk, Muwo Jeem, had referred to their designed trial as “A Modest Test of Strength”, Ahnu had known that they were in for something just a bit different from any previous combat Shrine. They stepped out of the cylindrical field of thin light that anchored the lift, recognizing that latent energy they could always just barely perceive within the entirety of the Ancient structures lightly clinging to the musty air, radiating off the walls and throughout their being. 

Other small things had clued them in on the situation, like how the pate of the small Guardian bore a strange crest of symmetrical, sinuous whorls instead of the barrenness they were familiar with. Or how when it extended itself vertically, revealing its three appendages, two of them appeared to be functional and armed—possessing an axe and shield of what they could only guess to be an entirely different caliber to that which they were accustomed to. The hard light that made up the segmented blue blade of the battle axe was more expansive, possessing more vertices and a longer reach. The same could be said about the matching shield, with its overall silhouette resembling that of a triangle. 

It was all of these vague details—the few seconds of observation Ahnu was permitted—that left them mostly expecting the distinction in the machine’s behavior as well, making so that they were almost prepared when it’d dashed forward towards them, faster than the lesser Guardians of the ‘Minor’ tests. Almost. 

When the Guardian began firing negligible globs of energy at them as it closed the distance, Ahnu reacted instinctively as opposed to intelligently—pulling their Shield of the Mind’s Eye off of their back to deflect the shots while quickly sidestepping the lot of the barrage. Managing to avoid all but the last of the shots, Ahnu—attempting something that really  _ shouldn’t _ have worked—deflected the last one  _ back  _ into the guardian that circled them, stunning it for a brief few moments. That was, admittedly,  _ very _ exciting. 

Not wasting any time getting caught up in their new discovery, Ahnu dashed towards the little training Guardian, slashing it as many times as they could with their Thunderblade before the thing had managed to brush aside the induced paralysis of their electric sword. They backflipped out of the path of it’s swinging battle axe, passively noting that it wasn’t just faster in its movement, but more refined as well. More accurate with where it aimed to harm. 

As their feet touched the ground, Ahnu wondered for the first time if they were actually safe in the controlled setting of the Shrine, against this slightly smarter, more tactical machination. If they’d ever been safe in the first place, back when they’d engaged their first “Test of Strength”—back when they’d only just woken up in the Shrine of Resurrection not even three weeks prior. 

Sure, they’d tested the limits of certain Shrines interior aspects, like the seemingly bottomless pits below everything in the platform-centric ones. They’d once assumed that there was no danger in paragliding down to the bottom, landing safely (if they could land at all), and then teleporting out of the Shrine to somewhere else if they couldn’t manage to find another way out. But no, at some point on the way down, they’d passed some unspecific threshold that engaged an ambiguous parameter in the Shrine, automatically teleporting them back up to the general area from which they’d left—leaving them similarly, but also less-so exhausted as they would have been teleporting normally. It wasn’t a feature that surprised them, considering that there were plenty of Shrines that were structured in such a way that simply didn’t allow for them to backtrack to the lift that had brought them down into the trial, automatically teleporting them back to it once they’d collected the Spirit Orb offered by the Monks. 

Of course, Ahnu had also learned how to circumvent this good-natured, but actually incredibly annoying process altogether—simply by quickly removing themself from the metallic pressure plate labeled “GOAL” at the top of the steps that lead up to the Monks altars. They’d long since figured out that after the Monks would dissipate, there was about a five second window for them to hop off the pad and successfully avoid being forcibly transported to the beginning of the Shrine. It was something they preferred to do whenever possible, choosing to instead walk back to the lift by themself. While teleporting within the Shrines wasn’t as bad as teleporting to them—something they couldn’t quite reason—they would always rather subvert the hassle of disorientation and nausea it brought on. Regardless, the overall impression Ahnu had of the interior of Shrines was that mostly, they weren’t real. It was, in part, illusory—at least so far in that the infinite and unseen vertical expanse of the floor was concerned. 

As they unleashed a flurry of attacks on the small guardian and subsequently dodged another heavy swipe of it’s axe—partially registering the intense change of the air pressure around the area where it had slashed through the space they’d occupied only a split second before, indicating just how fatal an attack it would have been were it to have landed—they couldn’t help but wonder further. Was the danger real?

If they weren’t careful—if they weren’t skilled—

_ ‘Could I die?’ _ Ahnu thought.  _ ‘Could this kill me?’ _

Indeed, could they have died all the way back then, too? At that first combat Shrine, which they’d so easily, immemorably conquered despite any real developed cognizance of the world. 

But then their train of thought was derailed by the little training Guardian extending its weaponry, giving Ahnu only a few seconds to dart behind one of the many convenient stone columns that littered the otherwise empty arena. The machine was evidently not that much smarter than it’s weaker variety, as it remained so solely, direly targeted on Ahnu as it swung and soared and crashed into the pillar with no re-evaluation whatsoever. Ahnu swooped in through the rubble to swing at it while it was stunned by the consequent damage of its own negligence, focusing especially on assaulting its vital-looking components with strikes towards its exposed and unguarded interior.

The little guardian pulled away from them hastily, bringing up its shield as it put a dozen or so meters between Ahnu and itself. Ahnu recalled only ever witnessing this type of attack the first time they’d fought one, when they were less sure of what they were doing and less nimble in response. They’d gotten too accustomed to fighting by the time they’d encountered their second combat trial—too fast and sure with a weapon in hand to ever let the small machines get to what they considered the ‘second phase’ of its attack pattern. 

They backed up themself, manifesting their paraglider in hand as the Guardian disengaged its weapons, retracting its arms into its internal structure, and then its head into its body. It gave only one aimless twirl of its head—a  _ warning _ —before it began to rotate at incredible speed, a blue string of light bursting forth from its eye. The beam swirled around the center from which it originated, growing in radius until it reached Ahnu, who jumped just in time to avoid injury and ride the convenient updraft that the rapid motions of the thin laser generated. 

Hanging suspended in the air for only a few seconds, just observing the actions of the guardian before quickly getting bored of its repetitiveness, Ahnu let go of their paraglider, dropping down into the fray—time seeming to slow as it always did for them when they focused. In an impossibly quick series of motions, Ahnu pulled their Phrenic Bow from their back, nocked an arrow, and let it fly—hitting the little test Guardian squarely in its bright, blue eye. They’d pulled too hard, though, snapping the wooden bow in half—but they hardly minded. It was the one they’d found in Faron, having looted it from the Lizalfos that patrolled the upper waterfalls of Floria. 

Time fell back into place around them, and as soon as their feet hit the ground, they dived towards the stunned machine, thrusting their neon sword into the same eye—

—Only for their Thunderblade to shatter in a burst of metal shards and magical sparks. The higher caliber Guardian was evidently far sturdier than the lesser counterparts, too. 

The sudden loss of their melee weapon, leaving them with only their shield, was instantly panic inducing, to say the least.  _ Unfortunate. _

More so than that, it was downright wretched. The thing had been in their possession for barely three days, and while it wouldn’t have been so much of a dilemma for them if it were any other weapon in their arsenal they’d just lost—it wasn’t. It happened to be the only thing they possessed that had some terribly vague, horribly ambiguous connection to someone that had some sort of connection to  _ themself. _

A connection that they would normally deny. Brush aside. Something they’d unconsciously convinced themself they didn’t want—and were in fact so fathomlessly averse towards. Something that ideally, they wouldn’t have to think about. 

But seeing that small connection lying in bits and pieces of enchanted metal fragments on the ground—it made them briefly, slightly mourn the thing. 

_ “Remember to mind the condition of your weapon.” Elle reminded them, voice low with light chastise. “Or this is what happens. You don’t want your weapon to break unexpectedly, leaving you unprepared and without a means of offense, do you?” _

_ ‘Annoying’ _ Ahnu bitterly derided, that miserable clenching in their chest only tightening as they were very suddenly inflamed with misplaced anger—converted from the very beginnings of a confused sadness they were starting to feel before the assailant had chided them at such an inopportune time.  **_‘Shut up.’_ **

**_“Arm yourself.”_ ** _ She ordered,  _ **_so_ ** _ intensely, leaving no room for debate. _

As much as Ahnu felt inclined to argue with nothing, their instincts were  _ screaming _ at them to do the same. To back away, retreat, hide or go on the defensive until attacking was an option again. The only thing they had to account for was how fast they could pull a weapon out of the Slate, versus how fast the Guardian could recuperate from their assault—which was fast, apparently. It was balanced on its four segmented legs in an instant, axe primed to slash at them while they were at their most vulnerable, almost as if it had sensed their weakness. 

They  _ were _ going to hop backwards, avoid the incoming hit, and sprint off behind the nearest stone pillars—but in their muddle of confusion and frustration, a strange thought took hold of them. Impulsive, perhaps even self-destructive curiosity had them bring their shield up over their front, ready to meet the bite of the ancient axe as their other hand yanked the Slate off of their belt.

It shattered too, as they’d expected, and the guardian reeled at the force of the impact as the splintering wood rained down all around Ahnu and the machine. It was the lesser of the two Shield of the Mind’s eye’s they possessed—the one they’d gotten back in the Toto Sah Shrine, across from the Hickaly Woods and hiding in a partially collapsed cave that was carved out of the Jia Highlands. It wasn’t the one they’d gotten from Kakariko, in the Shrine of the Swordsman. 

That one, they swiftly withdrew from the Slate—along with their Knight’s Broadsword. 

They weren’t sure why, but at that very moment, they’d wanted to see how powerful the thing was. Now that they’d had their answer, they swiftly finished off the little menace of a machine with a final few, excessively vigorous slashes of their own. They continued to hack away at it, even as it dropped its weapons, crumpled to the ground, and burst into an odorless plume of non-physical particulate that didn’t sting at their eyes. They only stopped once they’d heard the loud  **_*clack*_ ** from across the arena, signaling the access they’d been granted to the adjacent chamber where the Monk awaited them. The entire fight had lasted just over a minute. 

_ “Real fights don’t last long.” Elle imparted. _

Ahnu ignored her, instead choosing to focus on the menagerie of ancient scrap that was left behind. Some part of them understood that this was where the illusory element came into play, as they watched the thing so neatly disappear, leaving little but a few parts behind. They absently wondered what destroying a real Guardian—up on the surface world—might be like. What it would result in. What it would leave behind. 

But then they remembered their barely cognizant first and only encounter with a Stalker that was sedentary and mostly decayed, and Ahnu knew that that was something they would never do—while they were still in their right mind, that was. 

Ahnu stiffly collected the ancient parts it had dropped, still having no use for them, but still finding them neat regardless. Then they went for the abandoned armaments, which the Slate revealed to be an Ancient Battle Axe+ and Guardian Shield+. They donned the bright shield on their baldric, replacing the one they held, but deposited the axe into their Slate, preferring to keep a two-handed weapon on themself for the time being. They also withdrew their other Phrenic Bow—the special one made of Sheikah metalloid that they’d found under the center of Lake Hylia’s great bridge. 

When they stood back up, they took a deep breath, trying to compose themself for reasons they didn’t quite understand. Part of them just didn’t want to confront the Monk in such a state of...disarray? Frustration, perhaps? Though, admittedly, they felt more drained than anything else. Not physically, but more so emotionally numb after all of what they’d just experienced. It was a needless sentiment. They doubted the Monk could perceive their dishevelment—or if the Monk could, then they certainly wouldn’t care. The ones back on the Great Plateau certainly didn’t mind Ahnu’s existential confusion. 

And the ones they’d met soon after leaving it didn’t seem to mind their distress or their struggles, answering their questions—their  _ pleas _ —with little more than a hollow blessing, and an unwanted gift. 

Ahnu balled their hands into tight fists, jaw clenching but face very abruptly going placid and expressionless, eyes just slightly more narrow than their usual wide and gentle default. They stood up straight, swung around, and marched into the final chamber of the Shrine. 

They collected the Knight’s Bow from the offering chest, passively noting how the design was just a bit different from the ones they found in the over-world, up on the surface. Had all the weapons they’d received from within the Shrines always been like that? Had they just never noticed? It made sense, assuming that all the forged weaponry in modern Hyrule’s collective arsenal were all derived—rather, duplicated—from the style of those that had existed so, so long ago. Overall, there was no major distinction between the archaic and the current models of Knight’s Bows, but there were small alterations on the old one that they barely discerned before they stored it away in their Slate. 

Whatever. Ahnu wasn’t in the mood to contemplate the matter further. 

They stalked up the stairs to the altar of the Monk, gingerly stepping onto the goal plate. Despite their distaste only moments before, they were still...wary. Wary of being disrespectful. Whether or not Ahnu chose to acknowledge it, they held some level of regard for the ancient oblates. Perhaps it had something to do with the primordial disposition—the old and arcane atmosphere the ancient elders emanated. The context of their holy significance preceded them so terribly strongly, that Ahnu found it difficult to see the individuals as, well,  _ people _ . The Monks were reduced—or maybe elevated?—to symbols. 

It was hard to be mad at a symbol. A thing. Just another piece of some greater puzzle partially devoted to, but paradoxically also likely created in part by a capricious Goddess. Ahnu found it difficult to form any concise opinions on the hallowed shells of those who were just as subject to divine scheming as themself. 

Sufficiently calmer—albeit, numbly so—Ahnu sighed deeply, closing their eyes for a moment, only to open them and be met with a single one in kind. They reached out a hand, stroking the emblem’s pupil briefly as the surface of the firm wall of light became strangely pliable underneath their fingertips, undulating in emulation of still waters being singularly disturbed by their presence. The slight humming that Ahnu could always just barely hear, being the only sound that occupied the otherwise silent Shrine, picked up as it usually did, and the weaving of the vibrant strings that caged the Monk severed and shattered into uncountable pieces. 

Their resonant psionic connection sung as the Monk once again touched Ahnu’s mind. 

_ “Your triumph over the test of strength subverts a prophecy of ruin.” _

All things Ahnu had heard before. 

_ “From the ashes of Hyrule, a hero rises.” _

But never something they’d closely examined. 

_ ‘From the ashes of…’ _ Ahnu repeated in their own head, something subtle shifting into the light of their mind for the first time. 

Hyrule had never fallen 10,000 years ago. That much was obvious. But…

Hadn’t the Ancient Sheikah left behind their technology for the expressed purpose of ensuring that it never would? The Towers, the Shrines, the Slate—the Chamber of Resurrection. Wasn’t all of that to prevent the fall of Hyrule?

So why then, when the Monks spoke into their very mind, did the oblates behave as if they’d always perceived Hyrule as destined to collapse? 

But these thoughts were all cut short by the unusual sensation of a foreign spirit joining their own—something they’d so quickly forgotten in the mere two days they’d gone without the extra company behind their breast. Ahnu had hardly taken the time to savor the true isolation in their own body. 

_ “May the Goddess smile upon you.” _

Ahnu automatically clapped their hands together, more out of habit than anything else at the moment. They wouldn’t have guessed that they’d already acclimated to their self-imposed ritual to the point of conditioning, but there they were, hands held together in prayer without much thought or sentiment. 

It was only when they found themself incapable of uttering a counter-blessing that they were snapped out of their apathetic trance, realizing how reflexive their invocation was. Their throat had constricted so tightly, vocal folds resistantly limp. Something indistinct and uncomfortable filled their chest with the fluttering of a terrible anxiety.

“Ahn-and you..” Ahnu quickly forced out with a stilted bow, straining their voice that so adamantly refused to to cooperate. They sounded shrill and tonally dissonant, but also so clearly breathless. It was irritating—they sounded pathetic. 

Not that the Monk minded, as they were gone now. 

Ahnu quickly stepped off of the pressure plate, disengaging the automated teleportation parameter, before swiftly turning around, and heading back to the lift on their own. 

* * *

Ahnu ate an early, large dinner on the tip of Cape Cales as the sun began to set in the West, their little corner tucked away in the Southeastern most part of Hyrule having already fallen into premature darkness. They stared down over the edge of the great cliff end, focus constantly torn between the incredibly distant Eventide Islands, and the nearly half as-distant Shrine on the lone islet in the center of the Necluda Sea. 

After their meal of fire-roasted red meat and fresh fruit, Ahnu settled on pursuing the orange glow about five kilometers Northwest, despite the insistence of the intense, Westbound winds. Having only climbed the Cape, disposed of some archer Bokoblins in a nearby monster camp, and dealt with the relatively quick—if adrenaline rush inducing—combat Shrine, they were raring to go for one more endeavor before calling it a day, despite how pressing their last half hour had been. 

How ironic—and blatantly imprudent, if not counterproductive—that they would seek distraction from thoughts spawned by their spelunking in a Shrine through the pursuit of another. But they outright refused to ascribe sense to the decision, diving off the cape with their paraglider in hand.

* * *

At least they liked gliding. It was the one of the few things that granted them a mindless reprieve from their own head, getting to fly around entirely untethered. Their impulsive venture rewarded them in at least a single manner, as they neared the end of their two and a half hour journey by air. 

Hanging upside down on their paraglider, Ahnu spied a distant string of lights cresting into view on the open waters from behind the now for Cape, and upon pulling out their Slate to better see the glowing trail with the scope, they quickly realized just what the source of the illumination was—the entourage of fishing boats from Lurelin, heading over to do trade at Hateno Bay. 

Ahnu swung back to being right side up, they dropped from the sky, periodically materializing and de-materializing their Paraglider to prevent themself from gaining too much downward acceleration, so as to not dislocate their shoulders—or worse, hit the ground a bit harder than they could reasonably manage without sustaining severe injury. When they were only about 10 meters above the sands of the islet—which was only populated by the Shrine, a palm tree, the remnants of what looked to be a deserted raft, and a few stray crab—they were in a decidedly better mood than when their feet had last touched down on the ground. 

Landing on the small shore, Ahnu didn’t hesitate to bring up their hands, whistling as loud as they possibly could as the passing ships. When, after a good ten seconds, they were almost certain that the people on the vessels either couldn’t hear them, or were fairly weary of responding to the prompting of an unseen stranger in the distant and dark, Ahnu was pleasantly surprised to hear a slew of faint whistles being returned to them. 

The small smile on their face stuck around for as long as they rested on the tiny isle, watching the ships for a good half hour before entering the Shrine. 

* * *

They probably should have walked right out of the Shrine the moment the Monk had dubbed it as a “Major Test of Strength.” 

To be fair, Ahnu wasn’t exactly sure of what the consequence—if there was any—for departing from the puzzle rooms without having accomplished the set goal within was. On the off chance that they might have been permanently forbidden from returning to complete the Shrine’s trial if they’d left right then, they instead chose to do the foolhardy thing and satisfy that unwise facet of their curious nature that felt compelled the ask the question “How much of a threat would the little guardian pose?”

The answer, apparently, is quite a lot.

True to the barely established running pattern present in the scaling of ancient automatons, it was different from the one up on Cape Cales. It's crest was a full crown of ebony swirls, and on its spindly appendages it held the until-now unprecedented full assemblage of what looked to be an even higher tier of Ancient weaponry—brandishing a sort of sword, spear, and axe. It was faster than the last little Guardian, and smarter too, as evident by some actually existent level of tactical competence the thing possessed, which it readily displayed after it had charged Ahnu.

Diverting from it’s straight shot at them, it instead fell back onto the same circling strategy that was clearly ingrained in all models of its make, firing energy bursts at Ahnu in rapid succession like the last. What  _ wasn’t _ like their previous encounter was how it fired—taking into account it’s enemy’s likelihood of desiring to altogether dodge the globules of volatile light, and using that knowledge to corral Ahnu in  _ towards _ it. They’d been so focused on following the shots, they almost hadn’t noticed they’d nearly dived into a slashing sword or their own accord. 

They were still quicker than the machine, however, and dodged the assault, and every other that came after in the quick dance of blades. But, they would have been lying if they’d claimed that first close call hadn’t spooked them. When they really thought about it, they could count the number of times an enemy had actually managed to hurt them on a single hand, and half of those events happened to involve a rock pelting their head. Aside from being thrown from a Talus and swatted by a Stalnox—both instances that hardly injured them—they’d never been dealt any real, lethal harm before. 

They began to wonder what their own untested limits were just then, at the worst possible time for them to have been distracted, before the jab of a clever spear found itself just a bit too close for Ahnu’s liking, deeper embedding the significance of the task at hand. As they shattered their Knight’s Broadsword across the small Guardians ‘face’, they briefly recalled the question of whether or not—in this controlled arena under the close observation of an ambiguously invested Monk—they were safe to falter. 

Not too long after they’d withdrawn their brand new Battle Axe+ did the Guardian engage its second phase of periodical attack, hunkering down in on itself to spin around stupidly as it traced a growing perimeter with a weak laser. And, not too long after shooting it in the eye and assailing the thing with several flurries of rapid paced attacks did they break said axe on the very stubborn and  _ still _ not destroyed head of the thing.

**_“Hells.”_ ** Ahnu cursed under their breath, a panicked scowl plastering their face. It’d only been a minute and a half, and they’d already gone through two weapons. 

Suspiciously, the Guardian proceeded to back away, almost as if it were graciously giving them the reprieve they needed to withdraw their Edge of Duality from the Slate. Obviously, that wasn’t the case, as the thing had retracted into its most compacted form for the second time in what Ahnu had initially assumed to be another laser spin attack, prompting them to back away to a safe 20 meters. 

It was on account of this expectation that Ahnu was anxiously confused when that was immediately revealed to  _ not _ be the case. 

The small Guardian, still in its base form, prattled off a few strange clicks before its inner light dimmed altogether, only to relight almost immediately—assuming the same eerie blue of its eye as opposed to the comfortable vivid orange. And then, it extended to its full height again, not displaying its armaments, but glaring at Ahnu so incredibly brightly.

And then it grew brighter as it drew in light from around it, sucking up rapidly condensing particles of energy from  _ gods only know where _ —like a black hole, but beaming and blue. 

An ambiguous, feverish dread pooled in their stomach as the machine began to hum, and their thoughts—so paradoxically casual and cool—began to drift back to the question of safety to be found under the ground, in the Shrine, and under the watch of the Monk and the Goddess.

Such a strange contradiction in temperament that coexisted in their single being, torn between the struggles of the flesh and the complacency of the conscience. Amidst the strange mix, something else bubbled forth from the depths of their mind…

* * *

_ “So, we think that Shrines are built among these pockets of energy, drawing raw magic out of the ground and refining it, just like the furnaces!” came the excited elucidation of a young woman in a long, pale coat-like jinbei, as she gestured to some complex diagram on the board. “Though, we’re pretty sure their inductive capabilities are a tad superior. I mean, they’ve got to be right?”  _

_ The question was rhetorical—and frankly, without any real basis—but they couldn’t help nodding along with her suppositions. She seemed to appreciate the gesture.  _

_ “Eh, I guess we’ll see when we activate them one day.” She shrugged, nonchalant and so self-assured, leaving no room for the alternative ‘if’ in the place of ‘when’. “Speaking of activation, there are mentions of the Towers too—like the one we’ve partially excavated back on the Great Plateau. We think that they’ve got to be powered in the same way.” _

_ She looked over to them now, beaming with excitement behind a strangely framed set of glasses that seemed to possess false ‘lashes’ of their own. It was hard to see behind the glint of her lenses, but her eyes were the same dark, inky red color as those silly frames. A lock of brighter red hair fell away from the otherwise silvery-white stuff that made up her ridiculously complex and large up-do, which she impulsively blew out of her face with a smile before actually tucking it aside.  _

_ “Speaking of the Towers, we think that they serve as a conduit of sorts. Different texts mention that they bolster incredibly accurate sonar capabilities, and we’re pretty sure that they’re meant to radiate all that energy they harvest—and possibly share, mind you, through some network maybe—into the open air!” She elaborated, laying out some copies of important passages and citations from the old library. Her claret eyes scanned the words feverently as she continued, “Think about it; all that energy, just flowing freely into the ether! That’s how they used to power everything in Hyrule, you know!” _

_ She became a little more somber at that, dialing her enthusiasm down to what would be considered ‘socially acceptable’ levels. Hardly a reduction for most people, but a poignant shift in her.  _

_ They think it might have been the mentions of what ‘used’ to be that gave her pause. Almost two decades of re-integration—eventual  _ **_excavation_ ** _ efforts later—and Sheikah were still given strange looks when they talked about their ancient ancestors and their ancient endeavors in any manner more than disassociated.  _

Oh. Sheikah. She was Sheikah, they finally, belatedly realized—shattering the immersion of the memory. Things got fuzzier, fading out like their revelation was chasing it away, as night did light. 

_ “But now all that energy is just sitting, untapped—or maybe just unused—beneath the ground.” she resumed, turning to look at them. “Dormant, you know? I wonder what they power inside. The trials are said to be intense, but I guess you’ll get to see that for yourself one day, huh?” she quipped, leaning over the table to prop both elbows on the surface, her head in her hands. She looked right on past them, not quite making or maintaining any pressing form of eye-contact or generally uncomfortable attention. They liked that about her.  _

But they didn’t know who she was. They tried to hold on the memory just a little longer, futile as they knew the attempt to be. To stay in the moment that wasn’t—the scene that had long since elapsed.

—They could hardly see her now, amidst the rest of their dark, ambiguous imagination. She was an afterimage now, transparent and inverse as if they’d only just closed their eyes, and what was left of her lingered behind their lids. 

_ She grinned.  _

—They could barely hear what would be the parting words before the recollection left them entirely. 

_ “You better tell me all about it!” _

* * *

Ahnu panted wildly, exhaustion bearing down on them in full force as they watched the small,  **lethal** Guardian dissipate unnaturally in a puff of that fake smoke. Despite their state, ice-cold adrenaline gripped them as tightly as they did their Edge of Duality—the weapon that had dealt the fast, final dozen subsequent blows to the thing in a particularly stressfully executed spin-attack that put them  _ far _ too close to the machine for comfort. They’d cut the whole destructive affair far too close in general, all things considered. 

At least now they had the barest of impressions as to how things worked in the Shrines.

That energy that prickled the air—it actually  _ was _ there. It wasn’t just something they’d imagined, like a pseudo-psychological manifestation of aura in the atmosphere on account of just how mystifying the whole concept of the Shrines and their interiors was. No, it was very much so real. A palpable electromagnetic field, likely on account of just how potent the amount of energy there was handing in the air. 

Energy— _ magic _ that was somehow collected and condensed by some hidden series of mechanisms of the Shrines. Done so indirectly, at that.  _ Inductively _ . Absorbing the energy from the world around it, and repurposing it to supplement its own convoluted interior.

That’s why teleporting inside of the Shrines wasn’t so bad. It was still uncomfortable, sure, but it didn’t drain them physically because it didn’t  _ need _ to. When they teleported out in the open and above, the Slate must’ve used, at least in part, whatever source of energy it could most easily and readily access— _ themself _ . 

But down here, it had all the energy it needed. 

It was that same energy that the Guardian was drawing in, preparing to do— _ something. _ They didn’t really know what, but they could just  _ tell _ it was something  **bad** . Something they had to interrupt, to stop, or  **else** . 

Or else what, they were only vaguely aware of, but the idea of just how intense and imminent the danger was made their hands shake with something other than exhaustion as it held the hilt of the heavy Sheikah longsword in a vice grip. Ahnu had been  **terrified** . Panicking for all of those ten terribly long seconds they’d spun around the machine, blade in hands as they engaged in the most fatal of dances with an unmoving opponent that did little more than watch and taunt them with an ambiguous eventually, should they not prevail in this little test of wills. 

Not even the incredible assortment of weapons the little Guardian has dropped was enough to push aside their trembling with distraction. They dematerialized the weaponry relatively quickly, not even having to bother with the Ancient parts as the Slate had done so automatically, as it did sometimes when they neglected to do so withing a certain time limit. They hardly noticed that they’d made their way into the final chamber of the Shrine, until they stood before the offering chest with little to any recognition for much else of the tired process.

Inside, was something the Slate would identify as Climbing Gear. Neat as it was, it was still no consolation. 

Ahnu looked up to the Monk briefly, not expecting consolation from them, either. It was finally starting to sink in—that they couldn’t expect much of anything useful from the Ancient beings. If they weren’t dead already, they might as well have been. It wouldn’t have made a difference. 

Getting up to their feet, they walked around the chest, over and up to the altar, and tapped the flat pane of light—all while their head hung low, eyes focused on little more than the tips of their feet.

Ahnu didn’t resist the reflex to bring their hands together, so much as they didn’t regard it. They didn’t regard much of anything that the Monk did, and the devout seemed indifferent either way. 

_ “Your triumph over the test of strength subverts a prophecy of ruin.” _

“Hmm.” Ahnu hummed in response.

_ “From the ashes of Hyrule, a hero rises.” _

They caught a glimpse of the Spirit Orb as it entered their chest, and latently realized that even if they wanted to, they were physically incapable of rejecting the gift. It was just another imposition thrust upon themself. 

It was only then that they felt the gall necessary to look up. To look an unseeing Monk in the eye as directly as possible, and ask the unanswerable. 

“What would you have done if I died?” 

_ ‘If you killed me.’ _ they thought, a bit too absent to be bitter.  _ ‘If you killed me with your ‘Trial’.” _

Was it for the lack of regard they held for themself that they couldn’t truly, fully process how significant— _ how terrible _ a reality that would have been? That is, had they been given their grave answer. 

But their question echoed in an otherwise silent room. Always silent, save the hum of energy that emanated from the walls, and clung to the air. 

_ “May the Goddess smile upon you.” _

_ ‘May she…’ _ Ahnu repeated in their head, staring down the Monk as they dissipated.  _ ‘But will she? Does she actually?’ _

Despite the nature of the assurance each Monk had granted them thus far, Ahnu didn’t feel particularly blessed in her care. Not if this was how her most pious enacted her will. 

* * *

They didn’t notice at the time, but once they’d wandered back to the first chamber of the Shrine, and set up camp in the corner of the room near the lift, they realized that they hadn’t recited a blessing of their own to the Monk. No thanks for the trial or gear, nor any wish that the Goddess might also smile upon them. No sort of assurance that their patience had paid off. 

Ahnu didn’t mind the slight much, though. 

They didn’t even bother to analyze the short ‘memory’ they felt oh so dissociated from, or the new stranger that came with it. Just another lone piece of thousands that was stranded amidst the only puzzle they felt no compulsion to solve. 

Really, all they could think about was how foolish it was to have strived to complete two Shrines in a single day. 

* * *

Waking up inside a Shrine was never not unsettling, if only slightly. Not in the opening of the actual structure in the over-world, but down in the interior chambers, where Ahnu was almost certain by now that half of everything inside was indeed unreal. It was a little harrowing really, to remain inside the impossibly gigantic and ultimately empty rooms—especially after they’d already completed the task within, and the monk had long since departed the earthly realm. 

The remnants of whom still stirred ever so gently behind their ribs. Or at least, that’s what Ahnu imagined to feel, vivid enough that there being a likely psychosomatic sensation for it to seem plausible. That was pretty upsetting too, just as a concept alone—never mind it being the reality of the secret of the ancient Shrines. 

But, just as always, Ahnu shook off those thoughts. It was a new day—not that they could see outside, but the Slate indicated it was sometime in the late morning—and all they really wanted to do was forget about the day before (ironic as that is, relative to the entirety of their new-life). 

Also eat. They wanted to eat. A LOT.

An assortment of fresh fruit and roasted porgy was their by-now familiar meal, one which they only somewhat reluctantly prepared inside the Shrine after briefly debating that there was no real harm in starting a fire ‘indoors’. It wasn’t as if there was anyone left to care. 

It was under that same impression that Ahnu ate relatively fast, quickly becoming bored of eyeing the more minute details of the Shrine, like how the word “dungeon” was plastered EVERYWHERE, or how the fine trim that ran along the bottom of every wall and pillar had read the exact. Same. Thing. Repeating over and over,  _ endlessly _ . Honestly, it might’ve looked mystifying and intriguing to someone who couldn’t read the language—and granted, Ahnu certainly found it aesthetically pleasing in some sense—but it was such a goofy design element in practice. 

But to be even more honest, Ahnu would rather read their same word, over and over again, than look upwards as the facsimile of a sky that hurt their eyes with its particular hue and level of luminosity. It were as if gargantuan tiles of light were plastered to the ceiling, each with sinuous yet symmetrical patterns engraved dimly on their perfect surfaces, with a single condensed image spanning the square of four tiles put together. 

_ ‘Kind of like clouds.’ _ Ahnu registered.

Flawless, curling, runic clouds stuck on an eerily bright sky. 

Safe to say, they finished their meal quite quickly, putting away their skewers and snuffing out the fire they’d started with some water from one of their skins, before making their way onto the lift panel. 

It was only part way up the elevator that they were hit with some remorse regarding the litter they’d left behind in the Shrine’s interior, barren as it was now. They barely made it out of the mouth of the thing before they felt compelled to turn around, and do something they’d yet to try. Going  _ back _ inside, despite completing its trial.

They engaged the lift again, which upon registering their weight, clicked and hummed before beginning to sink, which was an expected turnout that probably surprised Ahnu more than it should have. Granted, it was never something they’d thought to do before now, considering the lack of utility therein, but they supposed that it shouldn’t be all too shocking that the interior of the Shrine would remain accessible. Shrines  _ were _ meant to be visited recurrently, after all. Normal ones, anyhow. 

What  _ was _ reasonably surprising was that the smoldering kindling they’d left behind, as well as the murky mess of water they’d used to douse it, was all gone. It was perfectly clean inside the Shrine. When Ahnu looked out into the other chamber from behind the grate and open door, they also noticed that whatever pillars that had been destroyed in their fight with the small Guardian the night before were present once again, intact and weathered looking as if they were ages old and had never been broken. 

Everything inside had been totally reset. 

Strange. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo! Back again! I meant to post this and the next chapter a LOT sooner, as I had them both mostly ready for a while now, but I sorta went and injured myself Christmas morning, and promptly got caught up in some other stuff. 
> 
> But yeah, Ahnu's regard for the Ancient Sheikah--at least, the Monks--is starting to spiral into the same dark territory that Hylia has already started to occupy. Almost like this whole "Chosen Hero" shebang is a grossly pressuring and inherently dangerous imposition to cast onto an adolescent who's only just starting to comprehend their unfortunate reality in miserable increments, huh?
> 
> Thanks for reading along! See you in the next chapter, where we'll get to hear a song, contemplate the finer nuances of friendship--and also go to Mt. Lanayru!


	23. Chapter 23--  Unto the Belly of the Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahnu meets up with Kass yet again, and against his better judgement and recommendations, they elect to explore Mt. Lanayru on little more than a passing whim, as per the usual--which turns out to have been the biggest mistake of their new-life thus far.

With the directions they’d been given back in Lurelin, and the lone, odd looking pillar of rock they spied off in the distance through their scope, Ahnu had a rough idea of where they were going next. If their assumption was correct, then they were heading towards Kitano Bay. 

Using the stranded raft they found lodged into the sands of Tenoko Island, Ahnu rode a strong Westward wind current in towards land, only occasionally having to course correct with a Korok Leaf they found near the Chaas Qeta Shrine. After four hours of cruising across relatively calm waters, only stopping occasionally to fish among particularly large clusters of porgy or to dispatch a swimming Lizalfos, Ahnu found themself nearing the 20 meter tall column of stone. 

More specifically, they crashed the raft into one of the many outcrops of rock that encircled the pillar. 

“ _ Hells _ .” Ahnu hissed, barely catching themself upright as their shabby vessel jolted to the right before abruptly halting. Evidently, they’d been too preoccupied with trying to steer the raft North against the winds that they hadn’t paid much mind to the surroundings of their destination, which resulted in a fair corner of their glorified log-pallet slamming against the edge of some unseen mound of rock. It was this same bit of outcropping that they had to jump onto as the rope binding their makeshift ship together came undone. 

Safe to say, they Cryonis-hopped the rest of the way to the pillar—the distinct tune of an accordion growing louder against the sound of sloshing seawater that tried to drown it out as they neared the landmark. They weren’t sure if they were surprised or not, given their last encounter with him had been only five days ago—though it certainly felt like much longer. 

Closing in on the column of stacked, age-old and petrified sediment, Ahnu noted just how unique the formation was, what with the assumed softer layers of minerals near the surface of the ocean having resulted in differing levels of erosion across the pillar’s entirety. It was thinner where it led below the waters, and the hard, condensed rock cap on the top boasted what they figured had to be a decent amount of surface area. As they climbed hastily up the thing, their hands brushed over countless striations of compressed sandstone—suggesting that the formation wasn’t only eroded by the sea, but formed in it. 

Curious. 

They peeked up over the edge of the rock, spotting the back of a familiar Rito bard that’d perched himself on the opposite and erect-most end of the column—completely unaware as to their presence. Not unusual, considering how the noise of his idle music and the ocean concealed what little sound the abnormally silent Hylian made in their approach. 

Unsure about how to instigate conversation with a familiar, but unaware party that was otherwise distracted, Ahnu stood silently behind the accordionist for a few minutes, just enjoying his music while they waited for him to notice them. When he didn’t, still facing due true West as he played his instrument so entirely focused in a paradoxically passive manner—as if in a trance—Ahnu settled down to sit with their legs hanging off the edge of the strange pillar, facing towards the island from which they’d departed earlier in the late morning. 

Ahnu tugged their Slate off of their hip, and began sorting through their inventory as they often did in their more idle moments, quickly moving on to tampering with the Slate’s finer subroutines. They ended up in a parameter menu that was labeled “Weapon Scaling,” which they figured was the Slate’s bit of programming that had to do with resizing weapons that were often too impractically big for a Hylian their size to use. It certainly explained the slight adjustments that scavenged armaments went through once Ahnu came in contact with them—though it was only barely perceptible when it came to standard Hyrulean weaponry. They absently recalled once that they’d nicked a club off of a moblin that was FAR longer than they were tall, before the dark bark cudgel shrank to more feasibly wieldable dimensions in their hands. 

Why they’d never questioned the mystery before was beyond them. Granted, this was only a little after they’d left the Plateau. They didn’t question a lot of things back then, only a couple of months ago.

They’d just spotted the input option under an inquiry that read as “User Height”, seeing it filled in as 160 centimeters—which they remembered as being their own height from when Claree took their measurements back in Kakariko—before they were spooked by an equally startled  **_“SQUWAK!”_ ** , accompanied by the discordant screech of an accordion.

“UAA—Ah!” Kass softly shrieked from beside and behind Ahnu, before his exclamation trailed off into a nervous fit of laughter. “Ah ha hah!”

They turned to see a wide eyed Kass who’d finally noticed them after a good ten or so minutes of blissful musings. They quickly exit out of their Slate’s sub-options menu and holstered it on their belt with their cloth tie to free up their hands. 

‘Hello.’ Ahnu signed, not exactly aware of themself as having done anything that may be considered distressing to most people. After all, they did—quite literally—nothing.

“Aha, um. Hello there.” Kass greeted them, trying his best to compose himself after the little scare they’d given him. He cleared his throat briefly before adding, “I certainly didn’t expect to see anyone else up here. In fact, the only people I’ve seen as of late were those on the passing ships, earlier this morning.” Then, a little more genuinely and resonant as he usually sounded, he continued, “How fortunate to cross paths with you again! Did you come to see the sea?”

That was a good question.  _ Did _ they come to see the gorgeous expanse of salt water without end? Surely, closing in on the ocean was something of baseless goal for them, back at the beginning of the month. If at least to satisfy some of the curiosity and wonder the sight of its distant horizon inspired in them, back up on the Lake Tower. It was that very sight that led them into the depths of Faron, where another subject of curiosity—the Zonai—captivated them enough that they’d promptly disposed of the endeavor entirely. Before they knew it, they’d stumbled upon the sea, and by extension the sleepy seaside village of Lurelin, more or less on accident once the endless storms of the Floria sub-region had effectively driven them out of the tropical jungle. 

Truly, the only consistent drive for their wandering was their pursuit of Shrines. 

What a grim reality that was, when they actually thought about it. 

‘Yes?’ Ahnu signed with a tilted head and a befuddled expression that made Kass chuckle. They took extra care to add a question mark at the end of their answer, to imply some sort of uncertainty on their part. They briefly recalled something Kass had told them, back when they first met, and shared a meal together. A simple answer—a statement that elegantly closed off topics of conversation with no real further implications. 

‘It’s complicated.’ they added, cutting short their quip by clasping their hands together with clumsily interlaced fingers that they held close to their chest. It was an awkward show of their bubbling anxiety, evident in their vexed and twisted expression, and the fidgeting of their fumbling hands that went white-knuckled as they attempted to wring each other out of their shared grasp. 

They didn’t look away from the blue parrot Rito though, despite the fact that with anyone else, they would have done so after no more than a few strained seconds of silence.

Kass tilted his own head in sympathy, his eyes as soft as fresh clay cast in yellow sunlight when they narrowed in interest, but without judgment. His might have been the only eyes Ahnu didn’t mind meeting for longer than what they would have otherwise found horribly uncomfortable. So gentle and sterling and stunning. The care of a loving spouse and a doting father and a compassionate stranger all glimmered off of his irises like light off of the facets of topaz. 

He really was such a captivating individual. His voice, his appearance, and the general atmosphere of accommodation he practically emanated—Ahnu couldn’t help but find it all so beautiful. It was a strangely intimate association for them to make in regards to a person as a whole. 

They only ever found places and moments to be so entirely beautiful and warming. Like a sunset or sunrise they got to see from a different place nearly every time they spied one. Like that gorgeous gradient of ocean to sky they felt  _ far _ too familiar with despite the literal  _ days _ they’ve had the pleasure of witnessing it. Like how they felt when they rested under the occasional tree, fiddling with the Slate or some supplies as they listened to the softly rolling winds sway the creaking branches and shaking leaves, feeling the spots of sunlight that snuck through the leaves warm the back of their neck and speckle the emerald grass around them with gold. Or how they felt running through rain—especially sun showers—where the constant pelting of the ground and themself was such a wonderfully constant and consistent source of gentle ambience and tactility that so instantly shifted their perspective on the landscape they were venturing, casting it all in a fine layer of water and a mist of mystique. 

Perhaps it had something to do with investment. It was easy to enjoy the surroundings that appeased their senses and offered no threat of scrutiny. Nothing more intelligible than the resources it beheld and the expanse of the unoppressive wilderness, where the rules were simple and the only real goal was survival. With so little restriction, there was an endless amount of freedom—but also seldom an argument against remaining detached. 

People were the exact opposite. Rules and trivialities that never came innately to Ahnu were the guides to coursing society and all of its finer nuances and interactions. But there was that coveted individuality that Ahnu couldn’t help but feel that they themself  _ lacked _ , that brimmed within each and every person they encountered. If they ever hoped to get even a glimpse of their personalities and their endless, inward expanse of potential and emotional depth, Ahnu had to stumble their way through the careful dance of socializing. Had to reserve some small portion of their scarce mind for every individual, and dedicate it to them. Had to anchor themself in some way, so that a part of them would always be with that person, instead of moving on from place to place like they were so accustomed to—because it was so much  _ easier _ . 

Because devotion and attachment, even to the barest of degrees—even when the association was particularly negative, as it had been will the blessedly few sour individuals they’d encountered thus far—all of it beget a fondness for, well,  _ people _ on the whole. 

And Ahnu never realized up until just now, as they stared at Kass with such an absent feeling of longing and admiration, that some part of them so desperately craved that sense of connection—just as much as they found the very notion deeply, terribly repellent. It was an unfounded discretion on their part, and just another one of the many intrinsic things about themself they had no basis to judge or question. 

Perhaps they were just overthinking things for the upteenth time. There were, after all, many things wrong with Ahnu. Their life was far from simple, and they hardly understood what little of it they knew as is. Perhaps an inherent dubiety towards people was healthy; it was certainly safe. And maybe Kass was the unusual one, in this case—an outlier of society in the best of ways, what with the incredible amount of intrigue he inspired, and the wholesome magnetism that drew others in. Bards were  _ supposed _ to be captivating. It was a rare occupation with a strongly communal element to it. 

“My friend?” Kass called to Ahnu from across the frenetic scape of their uselessly busy mind, pulling them out of their reverie. 

Oh. 

Friend.  _ That’s _ what it was. 

He’d called them that before, as had other people, but Ahnu supposed that they’d never truly reciprocated the fondness required for such a status to be attained mutualistically. 

That is, until now? 

Did that seem right? Was that what this was? Friendship? Genuinely? It was a practically alien feeling. 

Polite camaraderie came to them easily enough, but this? They supposed that they’d known Kass for a decent amount of time now, even if their encounters were brief and intermittent. He’d been another form of that consistency they craved in their life, making recurrent appearances—being in expected places when they went as far as to seek him out, like here and now, in Kitano Bay. 

“Are you alright?” he further inquired when they didn’t answer. His feathered brow furrowed some at their seeming vacuity, almost entirely out of concern for their worryingly passive behavior. The Rito knew them as someone who struggled to maintain eye-contact outside of some self-perceived necessity, which was fine and respectable on all accounts, but proved to be a standard that they were disconcertingly defying for reasons he couldn’t quite gauge. 

He’d by then had them pegged as someone who, on the surface and in practice, was mostly unperturbed by even the oddest of events and circumstance, weathering the harsh realities of the world with maybe an almost unhealthy amount of indifference. Clearly, there was more beneath the glaze of their grey eyes—a comparable, stormy ocean of sentimentality simmering just beneath what Kass could gleam on their half-masked face. An ocean they appeared to have been lost in at the moment, drifting about aimlessly, separate from the physical realm.

“Ahnu?” 

Said Hylian stiffened at the syllables, recognizing the still strange set of sounds as their name. Their hands unclasped hurriedly as their head tilted downwards now, eyes falling amongst the sparse greenery that littered the rock cap of Kitano Bay’s rock pillar. 

‘I am fine.’ Ahnu signed, quickly and regrettably adding, ‘I just feel bad.’

They winced as the meaning rolled off of their wrists. The overt implications of vulnerability that they so dumbly put forth would have been beyond uncomfortable to discuss. 

The sum of their ruminations from the day before were certainly harrowing. It must have put them into some glum, mellow mood that still stuck with them even now. Like another new lens through which they could see the world and all of its divine facets—and see how so little of it cared for them. 

Maybe that’s why they were desperate for some form of companionship, as fleeting as it may be. They wanted something— _ someone _ —to  _ care _ about them, completely unrelated to whoever they used to be and their greater purpose. 

“I’m so sorry to hear that.” Kass offered, his condolences so sweet and characteristically genuine. “Might I ask what troubles you so? If, of course, you feel so inclined to share. Perhaps it may help to vent.”

‘It’s complicated.’ Ahnu quickly reiterated, frowning some to themself as their eyes wandered over the edge of the column of stone the two stood upon, and down to the sloshing salt waters below where said column cast its erect shadow. They hoped he would just drop the subject. 

Kass, being rather empathetic—and unlike Ahnu, rather socially comprehensive—could successfully interpret that much. 

“Ah, well, never mind then. Forgive me for prying.” the Rito replied, his frown so easily melting into that soft smile of his, narrowed eyes filling with the gleam of humor where there was only just worry some moments prior. “Though, I just may have something that can take your mind off of your troubles, if only for a little while.”

Ahnu glanced up at him briefly, intrigue alight in their pale eyes, leaving little room for skepticism to take root in all of their desperation. 

“A distraction, if I may be so bold.” Kass clarified, emphasizing his point with a demonstrative and telltale drag of his accordion, which gave off a hearty series of notes from its inner reed-workings. “This oddly shaped rock pillar we’re standing on is the subject of a song. Would you like to hear it?”

Ahnu hardly had to think about their response, signing ‘Yes, please.’ without a second thought otherwise. Regardless of mood, they would always be up to hear one of Kass’s songs. 

And they could always use a distraction. 

* * *

The stone pillar wasn’t exactly a sundial—not a perfect one, anyways—but Ahnu worked out the riddle with relative ease. Granted, they only did so after the fact. 

To be honest, they initially interpreted “This rock will point towards its retrieval” as the literal orientation of the rock, which they presumed to be the direction Kass had been facing when they first arrived at the ocean monument—due West. Strangely enough, that worked. So...yeah. 

It was as they were strolling across ice pillars, dragging along the waterlogged chest with magnesis to bring it back up to the stone column, that their eyes fell back upon the shadow of the pillar. As they lifted the chest up to the rocky cap where Kass waited (and let off a surprised squawk when they dropped it near him), they realized that the ancient verse must have been in reference to the rock’s  _ shadow _ . If it weren’t for the coordinates, which Ahnu now realized to be a sub-standard method of listing off time, they likely would have never understood the damn riddle. 

It’s not as if the rock pillar were shaped in any way that would have more closely resembled a dial, and more accurately given off the time with its casting. It wasn’t exactly aimed North, nor was it angled in a manner that would have corresponded in degree with Hyrule’s latitude—whatever that was. Even now, at around 3:00PM, the shadow was pointing roughly Southwest, and running a bit of a minor calculation through a mental-time lapse of the sun’s position, Ahnu figured that by around 6:00PM, the shadow would have fallen towards the West, rather than the South—like an accurate sundial. 

All of this extra thought was irrelevant though, because Ahnu had already found the cache of the ancient hero—but still. 

“Oh, you didn’t have to do this, my young friend.” Kass remarked with a gentle chuckle as Ahnu hoisted themself up over the edge of the pillar, and onto their feet. “Hah, but I am ever charmed that you sought to include me in this little discovery!” He closed in on the chest with them, admittedly eager to glimpse just what riches the ancient hero of legend had left behind. 

So imagine his surprise when it turned out to have been little more than a single gold rupee. 

Funnily enough, Ahnu didn’t really seem to mind, pocketing the meager inheritance with little thought otherwise, and impassively kicking the chest back into the ocean. It was only when they turned up to see a slack-beaked Kass, did they giggle. 

“Ah—ahem. Hmph, well, ah—“ Kass cleared his throat, stumbling to reason, “Hero through he was, he was much more rich in character than wealth…”

Ahnu nodded along, not particularly invested in the topic so much as amused by the juxtaposition—before they abruptly stilled all motion. It was only for a moment, and Kass hadn’t caught it, but he did seem to notice the perplexed look in their eyes when they looked up to meet his own, head slightly tilted in muted confusion. 

“Oh?” the Rito noised. “Is something wrong? I mean, that is still a fair sum. I’m sure you’ll be able to make good use of it!” His concern for their probable disappointment was misplaced however, which he quickly realized after better analyzing their expression. 

“Hhhe?” Ahnu spoke aloud, their exhale on the consonant dragging unnaturally and their inflection rising to that of a question. They didn’t mean to sound so strange, but they hadn’t really expected themself to speak. They were just surprised—at themself and at this supposedly irrelevant information.

They didn’t know that the ancient hero was a “he.”

It’s not that it didn’t make sense. It wasn’t as if they were the same person from 10,000 years ago— _ hells _ , they weren’t even the same person from  _ 100 _ years ago, in a more philosophical sense. It was just something they hadn’t known up until now. 

“Pardon?” Kass inquired in kind, not quite grasping what they were getting at. 

“Ahm—aye-I diddn-didn’t—“ Ahnu stuttered out, flustering themself with their failed attempt at vocalization before switching back to sign. ‘I didn’t know the hero was a man.’

“Oh!” the bard exclaimed, before quickly— _ too _ quickly—adding, “Well, he might not have been!”

At that, Ahnu only looked more confused. 

“Er, what I mean is—“ he rapidly reasoned, “—these accounts are VERY old, after all. As much as I love the deviations in oral tradition that supplement creativity, I won’t lie and tell you that the finer details of my songs are entirely accurate.” He brought up a feathered finger to scratch at the fluff of his cheek in a rather cute show of nervousy. 

Ah. That made sense. 

“Honestly, I’d take any stories regarding Hyrule’s history with some skepticism nowadays, if I were you.” he added, further expanding, “Unfortunately, there isn’t really a way for those of us in the modern times to verify much of anything, as the lot of all records are either lost, or irretrievable.”

Ahnu frowned some at that. What was the difference between lost and irretrievable in this case?

‘Why? What do you mean?’ they signed. 

“Ahm, that’s a bit…” Kass caught himself from parroting back the ‘it’s complicated’ excuse for something that decidedly wasn’t, nor was it a particularly uncomfortable topic of discussion. It was just something that they didn’t know. Not anymore, that is. At least, that’s what he presumed. In all of his encounters with them, he still couldn’t quite grasp their disposition beyond anything more than  _ tragic. _

But every time he looked at them, he didn’t see someone who was weathered by the weight of the world, or even tuned into the depths of their own misfortune. There was some level of emotional divorce— _ no, _ disassociation—that kept them operative, but there was something more than that, he knew. Or rather, less.

It was almost as if…

“The thing is,” Kass started, “—the archives that haven’t been lost to time are...well, in the Castle.”

“Oh.” Ahnu softly noised, passive recognition glinting off of the grey of their eyes. 

Curiously, Kass saw little else on their face. Telling, that was. 

“I mean, you can find any number of records regarding, well,  _ anything _ in practically any settlement with a library—“ he clarified, “—but only the ones in the Castle are officiated. They were, I mean. There isn’t really a standard for that, anymore. I’ve heard that the Library in the townhouse of Kakariko is composed mostly of copies of some of that in the Castle, but it isn’t anywhere near comparable in magnitude…” he trailed off. He was rambling now, he realized. He didn’t have much else to say on the subject—but he couldn’t quite stop talking, it seemed. 

“Of course, I’ve never been—I’m not Sheikah. Hah ha, I mean clearly…” Kass tittered absently, running a feather along the underside of his beak as he looked out over the ocean. “But perhaps you might be able to verify—“

Kass stilled. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he felt like he’d said too much. No, rather, he’d said the decidedly  _ wrong _ thing. Not necessarily factually, but...

He looked back down at Ahnu, more curious than concerned. They looked up at him—and dare he assume, they looked somewhat...annoyed?

‘I’m not Sheikah.’ Ahnu signed, a slight frown twisting their face. 

…

“Oh.” was all the Rito could say. 

_ ‘They don’t know who they are.’ _ Kass thought.

Everything made a lot more sense to the Bard just then, and now he was cursed with the knowledge that the same could not be said for Ahnu. 

* * *

_ “Are you absolutely certain?” Kass had asked, not for the first time that evening. “I can’t say for sure, but being as familiar with the cold as most Rito are, I don’t think I could overemphasize just how nasty that storm looks.” _

It was kind of him to warn them of the blizzard. They weren’t exactly sure why he’d felt the need to reiterate the supposed severity of what he’d assumed to be a magically induced storm, but they appreciated the sentiment. 

Perhaps they should have listened. 

_ They poked idly at the fire as the evening dragged on, watching the excess of embers dance wildly and briefly before they fizzled out and died, one by one. They’d since finished the fish and mushrooms that’d occupied their skewer, but the Rito seemed keen on delaying his consumption every other bite, instead choosing to occupy his beak with his attempts at dissuading them from their set course. Most of his meal sat intact on a skewer that was made of dull looking steel, but possessed some neat engravings that wrapped around the wider base of it like ivy.  _

_ “While I may be from the opposite corner of Hyrule entirely, I was a traveling bard in my younger years as well, before I met my wife.” he divulged, ever concerned. “I distinctly remember the very same storm raging atop Mt. Lanayru.” _

Mt. Lanayru. 

That’s what it was called. 

Ahnu couldn’t pretend that they didn’t stiffen when they first heard the name—that they didn’t recognize it. Not really consciously, but somewhere deep down,  _ something _ registered. 

Would this just become another facet of their confusing new-life they’d have to adjust to? Finding a melancholic familiarity that they couldn’t reason in  _ everything? _

_ “Rumor from a nearby village has it that the blizzard’s cloaked the peak of the sacred mountain for nearly 100 years.” Kass expanded.  _

In other words, since the Calamity. 

_ “I would personally recommend heading there instead. Do some investigating before embarking on such a perilous journey.” he further urged him.  _

When Kass had suggested that they head to a nearby village, Ahnu had politely turned him down. Him mentioning Kakariko was enough of a reminder that as wonderful as he was, his advice was not always equally so. Though, as Ahnu neared their self selected destination, and the temperature began to drop dramatically, they started to think that their own impulsive decision making was just as detrimental. 

But as Ahnu made their way up the ragged face of one of the mountain line’s adjacent, grand ridges, all they thought about—besides the growing cold that’s forced them to don their old doublet over their stealth gear—was how insistent on caution Kass had become. He was well enough aware that Ahnu regularly undertook tasks that the average Hyrulean simply could  _ not, _ and that even in the little time he’d known them, they’d managed themself just fine. 

Ahnu had only JUST been telling him about how they’d retrieved a Royal Broadsword from a black Hinox they’d slain, when they spotted a piece of the dense cloud cover they couldn’t exactly see from their current angle drift away from the mountains. Ahnu recalled having seen the profile of the great mountain back in the Rabia Plains, where they’d first re-encountered Kass, and solved the evident riddle sewn into one of his ancient songs. When they asked him if he’d known anything about said summit, it were as if a switch had flipped in the Rito, and his recommendations against anything remotely dangerous had suddenly, well,  _ existed. _ Granted, he’d been acting a bit off since before Ahnu suggested that the two of them share a late lunch around a fire, still atop the stone pillar. His eyes remained gentle, but stuck narrowed in contemplation and concern rather than in the equivalent of an easy smile. 

_ “Sacred?” Ahnu asked. Now, unfortunately, they were VERY interested in the mountain, much to Kass’s dismay.  _

_ He sighed. _

It wasn’t more than a half hour after donning their doublet that Ahnu found it necessary to exchange the lightweight Guardian Sword++ on their back for their Flameblade—a weapon they’ve come to rely on FAR too much for supplementing heat, as opposed to actual combat. They hadn’t even felt the crunch of snow beneath their feet by the time the temperature fell beneath 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Frankly, the cold hard rock of the mountain face was nearly enough to usher them into their trousers and boots as well, but the pants couldn’t quite fit over the Sheikah tights they were already wearing (and refused to take off), so they instead opted to wear just the boots. They didn’t like how much that decision limited their stealth, as the noise-dampening qualities of the dense synthetic silk that covered their feet were basically nullified by the necessity-born accessorizing of the comparatively noisy footwear, but it was at least moderately more comfortable in the inclimate weather. 

In the bright sun and curiously clear skies of high noon, Ahnu could see the distant and famed peak of Mount Lanayru as they just managed their way onto level ground. At about seven or eight kilometers away, it was hard to see much of it in great detail—though, most of that was due to the expectedly opaque cover of raging storm clouds. Through the scope of the Slate, Ahnu could better make out several of what looked to be enormous crystalline spires of ambiguous make, jutting out from various places on the central mountain. 

Fastening the Slate back to their hip, Ahnu eyed the summit just a little longer. They were sure of themself. 

_ “Back in the day, access to the mountain was prohibited to the lot of Hyrule, as per order of the royal family.” the bard, seemingly reluctantly, shared. “Only a select, approved few ever got to journey the trail to its peak, where they would pray at the ancient Spring of Wisdom.” _

_ He was cleaning and tuning his accordion now, picking around the inside with all the finesse of a seasoned instrumentalist. He told them that he always focused on refining one aspect of it’s inner workings per upkeep session, so as to always gradually maintain its general well being. Ahnu didn’t exactly understand every aspect of what they saw him do from across the smoldering flames, but they could see him minutely adjusting the positions of each individual reed with some fancy looking tool. They believed him when he said it was one of the most difficult instruments to fully tune by hand.  _

_ At the moment, it seemed as if he would rather strain his eyes trying to gleam the insides of his instrument, than look at Ahnu.  _

_ “Of course, there is no royal family to stop passing travelers from exploring anymore. Plenty of treasure hunters and cartographers tried venturing to the site in the early decades following...well, you know.” Kass went about resealing his accordion in silence for a little while, before finally concluding, “Most turned back on account of the weather, or were chased off by scores of monsters that littered the trail, but…” _

_ He paused.  _

_ “There are more rumors, albeit, less than veritable ones.” He looked up at them from the instrument in his lap, his face painted a grave expression that looked so wrong with his gentle features. “Something about how an evil spirit resides atop the peak, poisoning the waters of the spring and shrouding the summit in the very blizzard you see from a distance—so as to hide itself. No one’s gotten close enough to obtain decisive evidence, but still…” _

_ The worry in his voice was as heartwarming as it was harrowing. The tone carried well on his lovely voice, just like everything else he uttered, which made it all the more odd.  _

_ “Ahnu.” he said, and they stiffened. “Please, do be careful. If… if something feels amiss, promise me that you’ll do what you can to avoid danger.” _

Funnily enough, Ahnu recalled that moment from the evening before rather fondly.

Dumbfounded by the inexplicable compassion Kass directed solely towards them in that moment, they could only nod. They weren’t exactly sure if they were good at keeping promises, but they certainly would try to keep the first one they’d made in their new-life. 

They shook off all remnants of the recent memory, wanting to concentrate on the view before them, and the secrets behind the storm. 

Besides the anomalous perma-blizzard, the whole setup was uniquely bizarre. There was  _ something _ on this mountain. Something meant to be hidden from the general population. Ahnu had an inkling as to what it might have been, but when the dowsing sensor on their Slate picked up, directing them North as opposed to Northeast, they were fairly confused. 

Perhaps there was more than a single Shrine on the mountain, they’d thought at the time. They’d found the Ancient structures relatively close together before.

They set off North, intent on finding the nearby Shrine before continuing their venture towards the peak of Mount Lanayru, and the hidden Spring of Wisdom. 

* * *

The first time the snow around them began to shift, Ahnu had already drawn their Flameblade before the lizard-monster had burst forth from beneath their feet. They didn’t get to see much of it, before the thing dissipated in a powdery mist of ice and water vapor, which mystified them greatly. 

_ “An Ice-Breath Lizalfos, dearest.” _

Ahnu jolted at the lumination, nearly dropping the pale tail of the slain monster they were examining. It’d been  _ weeks _ since they’d heard the Academic prattle off something in their head. Since the damned near beginning of the month was the last time they’d heard anything in that boisterous Gerudo of hers. They’d nearly forgotten she was even an entity that occupied their mind—or at least, a recurrent proponent of their recollections. 

...What a strange reality that was to be reminded of.

_ “With a constitution dependent on unbroken ice magic, they’re particularly susceptible to the heat.” she joked. “Setting a simple arrow on fire and grazing them with it is enough to make them POP!” _

Well, that explained why the thing burst upon mere contact with their Flameblade. What a fickle magical binding. 

Ahnu tried not to linger on the fondness in her voice. They never really paid much attention to it before, but in the last month, everything they’ve perceived, internally as well as external, has been so much  _ clearer. _ Gone were the days that they could passively shrug off what they now understood to be memories. They tried not to wonder when they would remember her name, too, as they marched on through the snow. 

Unfortunately, the only thing they succeeded in leaving unexamined was the greater implication of nearly a full month having elapsed in the absence of the Academic. 

* * *

They didn’t encounter many more of the Ice Lizalfos, but as evening fell, they made the unfortunate discovery that a variant of Keese imbued with the same properties of ice magic existed. Thankfully, they didn’t have to put up with the annoying and incessant medley of bat-monsters for long—their Shrine sensor having led them off an incredibly massive cliff, down to the Western base of the mountains. 

It was there that they found said promised Shrine, hidden in a cave behind a loose mound of cracked boulders that they easily destroyed with a single rune bomb. 

Deciding that once they entered the Shrine, they wouldn’t be coming out until the next day—as they certainly were NOT going to camp out in below freezing temperatures if given the choice—Ahnu foraged around the outside of the caverns for no more than a brief half hour, coming away with a few bundles of Cool Safflina, Chillshrooms, and a delightful looking new fruit they found in a couple of bushes that the Slate identified as “Wildberry.” They couldn’t wait to indulge in the cute little things after completing the Shrine. 

That didn’t take long, either. 

The Tahno O’ah Shrine was another blessing. 

_ “To you who sets foot in this Shrine… I am Tahno O’ah. By entering this place, you’ve already proven your worth.” _

As they stepped off the lift, Ahnu count help but wonder,  _ ‘Was that it?’ _

Just the fact that they’d found the Shrine was good enough to grant them a blessing? Ahnu supposed that making it to the other side of the snowy mountain wasn’t worth nothing—it WAS cold, after all, and there was always the threat of monsters and wolves—but they couldn’t help but feel that they must’ve skipped some greater puzzle or scheme in accidentally stumbling upon the thing. 

The interior was a tad different from the one back in Floria, what with there being an abundance of clean freshwater on either side of the steps that lead up to the offering platform and the Monk themself. A bit more grand and nicely designed. The pools really were a nice touch. 

Ahnu collected what turned out to be the final bits of garb they needed to complete their climbing set. The Slate automatically filed away the pelvic climbing harness, the comfortable synthetic silk capris with leather padding sewn in below the thigh, and the no-slip short boots under the umbrella description, “Climbing Boots”. Were it not for the subdued atmosphere of the Shrine, they would have been more expressly excited for the acquisition, but there was still the Monk to deal with. 

They might not have minded at all, even just a week or so ago, expressing themself in any manner—especially in a positive one—before the old oblates. Now, it were as if they couldn’t. Not for the conscious regard and suppression towards how they would emote, but for how the mere notion of the Monks and their lifelessness affected them. One look at the pious, and Ahnu was awash with an oppressive apathy—a feeling they must have been reciprocating. Reflecting, even. 

They climbed the rest of the stairs, and engaged the hard-light field. 

_ “You have done well to arrive at this Shrine. A hero rises to right the wrongs of Hyrule.” _

More and more, Ahnu was starting to doubt the credibility of these ‘trials’ for the hero. 

_ “In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I bestow upon you this Spirit Orb.” _

As the soul of the Monk joined their own, Ahnu brought up a hand to aimlessly rove their chest as they peered up at the husk that would soon disintegrate without the energy of a spirit to fuel it. 

“You know I found this place by accident—” they asked, absolutely rhetorically. “—right?”

_ “May the Goddess smile upon you.” _

Ahnu sighed, but clasped their hands together nonetheless. 

“And may she you, as well.” 

* * *

While their fish and vegetables roasted by the fire near the lift, Ahnu filled their empty waterskins with the water from the Shrine—after which, they took the opportunity to bathe. In the comfortable 73 degrees of the temperature controlled interior of the Shrine, it was a pleasant experience that they doubted they could replicate anywhere else on the mountain considering the climate, so they made sure to enjoy it. The warm water was only about as deep as Ahnu was tall, if not a few centimeters less, which actually gave them fair room to swim around.

Which they did, for about a half hour. It was peaceful. Fun, even. Though, some of their food was a bit burnt from sitting so close to the fire, unattended for as long as they’d left it. They didn’t mind all too much. 

After eating what of their half-burnt food they felt so inclined to, the exhaustion of having stayed awake for nearly two days finally began to bore down on them. As they settled in for sleeping on the hard floor of the Shrine, with only some scrap cloth and canvas to cushion their recline, they remembered the wildberries they’d gathered not too long ago. 

Ahnu rolled onto their stomach, Slate in hand, and withdrew a couple from their inventory. Popping one into their mouth, Ahnu’s eyes widened some as the delicate skin of the fruit burst under the slightest amount of duress from their teeth. The juices were indeed as tangy and sweet as the description in the materials menu had promised. 

It was a strong contender for their favorite fruit, against only the mainland apples they liked so much. Crisp, sweet, but also with that bite of tang. All in all, it really only came down to what their preference for texture and flavor was at the time—and at the moment, they wanted to eat the rest of the Wildberries they’d gathered. 

Splitting the difference, Ahnu only ate half of the meager amount they’d foraged near the Shrine’s cave, and hoped that they’d find more on the mountains as they drifted off to sleep. 

* * *

_ “...But,” she said, “—you can’t come with me.” _

_ She wasn’t looking at them anymore, having since turned back to the guardrail and the sunrise—her hair blending into the golden light as it flowed freely in the gentle West winds while she walked forward.  _

_ They followed close behind, joining her at the edge of the park boardwalk that overlooked the wide expanse of the central fields. They mimicked her when she reached out to grasp the old iron railing, but noticed that when they looked down at her hands, she was squeezing the metal  _ **_hard_ ** _ —in a white knuckled grip.  _

_ She laughed. It was so familiarly hollow.  _

_ “You’re too young.” She finally continued. “Father has arranged for Mipha to take me to the summit.” _

_ Mipha.  _

_ Mipha. Mipha.  _ **_Mipha._ ** __

_ Who was Mipha, again? _

_ The name sounded...red? Beautiful. Kind...? _

_ They looked up from her hands, to see her face. They couldn’t quite make it out. There was a miasma of—of  _ **_something_ ** _ —obscuring everything about her. Making her abstract. Just shapes and brushstrokes and colors. They could feel her apprehension better than they could see the expression on her mishmash face.  _

_ She was all sunlight and sorrow to their unseeing eyes.  _

_ “You’ll have to wait with the others, down at the East Gate.” She resumed, flat in tone. “—And… I…” _

_ She turned to them, but that only made it worse. They flinched—looking directly at her was hard, and indescribable. The obfuscation was a filter that layered her features precariously and uncannily. It wouldn’t let them see her. _

_ Her.  _

_ Who was  _ **_she?_ **

_ “I don’t know if…” she murmured, her voice wavering at the end. It nearly tailed off into a whimper, but she seemed to catch herself. “I…we...we should get going. Back to the Stable.” _

**_“Whe...where?”_ ** _ they croaked.  _

_ But that was the wrong thing to say.  _

**_They weren’t supposed to speak. Weren’t supposed to be able to._ **

_ When they tried to look around—to see where they were—everything was as equally odd and inscrutable as her. They brought their hands to their chest, where all they saw was a blurry mess of blue. Eerie, bright blue that was soft to the touch.  _

_ They looked down to their hands, where only their exposed fingers apart from the fingerless gloves and ambiguous attire they wore were uniquely untouched by the warping. That’s when they realized what was happening.  _

_ Their head shot back in her direction.  _

**_“Who are you?!”_ ** _ Ahnu feverently asked, desperate to get an answer before the world fell away around them, into the darkness and out of sight and mind.  _

_ They reached for her as she slipped away, and they fell threw the ground, into the dark, everything fading away and dissolving into nothingness— _

_ And for a moment, it looked like she was reaching for them too— _

_ She was a bit clearer, for just a moment, and her lips moved, but they couldn’t hear her anymore— _

_ They scrabbled uselessly for purchase in the darkness— _

**_“Wait, I can’t—PLEASE—“_ **

But it was too late.

Their breath hitched as they blinked their eyes open to the aggravating bright blue of the faux sky of the Shrine, segregated into pieces and obscured only by superfluous framework. 

* * *

They were nearing the close of their second day on the mountain, having woken up past noon, hiking and climbing in the snow well into the night. 

The sun had already set when they formally entered the blizzard, as while its radius seemed to fluctuate, it was mostly consistently fixed to a single position. As they neared the summit, maybe two kilometers out laterally, it became clear that the peak was in fact that position—the place from which the storm radiated. For just over three hours, they’d been braving that particularly bad weather, blinded by the dark and the intense snowfall and the freezing winds in the near midnight. 

They wouldn’t lie and say that they hadn’t felt it. 

Something strange and distinctly hostile lingered in the air. They could sense something off the moment the temperature dropped into the negatives. They didn’t know what it was, but it put off the incontrovertible aura that they should NOT have been there. That they should NOT have kept going. 

Because there was something at the eye of the storm that went unseen through the blizzard. But it was there—and dare Ahnu admit, **_it knew that they were there too._**

Watching, not unlike a predator, but not particularly hungry, either. Menacing, but with little reason or rhyme. 

Perhaps the most harrowing realization—one they’d absently processed while climbing yet another one of the crystal spires they now knew to be unbelievably gigantic columns of quartz—was that whatever it was, it was  _ not _ of the physical realm. 

It had that off, otherworldly feeling that spirits had to them. Comparatively, nature spirits like koroks were the most tangible and grounded, both literally and spiritually. They couldn’t pass into the unseen like fairies (and supposedly, Blupees)—so much as they could volitionally limit their ability to be perceived by most people—and they certainly couldn’t pass into a higher realm. 

_ “The Sacred Realm.” _ offered no particularly distinct voice. 

Ahnu shuddered at the unheard utterance that echoed in their head, as they pulled themself to the top of the spire, only to paraglide down from it and to what they could only assume to have been the intended trail. They refused to travel it, of course, instead favoring the shortest series of paths up the mountain that offered the least resistance to traverse as well as relatively low monster activity in exchange for a bit of extra climbing. It just seemed more efficient than hiking the terribly long spiral road up to the peak. It was that mode of operations that had led them up and around to the Southwestern leaning side of the mountain. 

That was what saved them. 

What the dense blizzard and dark of the night had prevented them from seeing, they could still acutely sense. They were certain now, that whatever it was atop the mountain that they couldn’t see, it wasn’t a nature spirit—and it was  **immense.** Perhaps not physically. Maybe it wasn’t a corporeal thing at all, but it’s presence was grand and intimidating. 

It was almost dreadful, that feeling. It was a pressure—not inherently malevolent—but crushing all the same. So rare was it, for some external and identifiable thing pressing on their lungs, making it difficult to breathe. But perhaps that was just the altitude. 

Ordinarily, it was something that would have been repellent to the average Hyrulean. It would have made anyone begin to at least begin to consider turning around. 

But Ahnu found it so uncannily compelling. 

It was as if their drive to satiate their curiosity—to find what was hidden on the mountain; that Spring of Wisdom and all the secrets it’s waters withheld—was multiplied all the more they came to perceive something they couldn’t quite identify as a threat. They were wide eyed as they pursued the aura, as painful as the expression was to manage in the bitterly freezing winds that lashed at their exposed face.

It was only as they vaulted over the edge and to the top of yet another column of quartz did something shift in the air, finally giving them pause. 

Ahnu looked around, only then fully aware of the nature of their blindness in the blizzard—just how bad it’d gotten. They couldn’t see more than two meters in front of them, all else having long since been consumed by the grey that what the snow saturated air in the dead of night. It wasn’t only their sight that was nullified, either. The whip of the constant cold gales was a deafening whistle, and the snow completely dampened their sense of smell. 

They hadn’t realized how vulnerable they’d left themself. How terrible a situation they’d callously inserted themself into—all while almost in a trance of pursuit. Finally, the sheer chill began to deep into their skin and bone, granting an icy clarity to just how reckless they were being. 

They were near the top of the mountain, now. Maybe over a half kilometer climb.

But it was time to turn around. 

They felt  **eyes** on them. Several. A strange amount, big and bold and distinctly daring. They wanted to be able to pierce the dense veil of snow, and stare right on back. 

But they  _ had _ to turn around. 

And they did.

For all of a few seconds. 

Because then they noticed that the grey fog of sleet had begun to thin; begun to brighten. 

Begun to turn pink. 

Maybe it’d always been pink, in shades softer or muddier, and so overwhelmingly encapsulating—just everywhere—that they hadn’t noticed. Maybe they’d just been too focused, too fixated to a degree beyond healthy to care. Their eyes caught on to those little eerie specks of magenta light that rose from the rock and crystal beneath their feet, slowly and lazily dancing upwards against the snow that so juxtaposed its malevolent gentleness with how the more natural phenomena coldly whipped at the mountain at a steep angle. 

They watched as one of the faux-fireflies emerged from the dark limestone of the mountain that their hand was splayed against for support, the vile thing slipping between their fingers and away from them as if the bits of brilliance were as repulsed by Ahnu as they were it. Their eyes fell to quartz spire, which was mottled with ambiguously colored luminescence from deep, deep within—a scene they were only granted witness to on account of the transparency of the crystalline structure beneath their feet. Dim blemishes that we’re the rising specks snaked their way past the striations and inclusions of the white quartz that hampered its overall clarity, but still, Ahnu could see the things coming from somewhere below.

It were as if the lights were born from the earth  _ itself. _

And just what were they? Ahnu had seen them twice before. 

They reached out to touch one with a gloved hand, but it drifted away from them as if it truly were repelled by them, like two similarly charged poles of a pair of magnets. They cupped both hands, chasing another stray speck into one hand with the other, effectively trapping it.

They felt a small wave of titillation run throughout their hands, just under their skin, not unlike the static they feel when handling shock arrows, but instead of pain, there was a surge of adrenaline that shot through their system. Their muscles were seized by a vigor that was uncomfortably foreign to them. It was intense, but brief—thankfully dissipating only moments later, leaving them almost feverish in its wake. Their hands were still clasped together in a death grip, volar tendons having gone rigid as every other muscle in their body.

Unfurling their fingers, Ahnu was very unfortunately made aware of the holes left in the thick gloves that’d come with the Doublet they were given by the king. They were certain that when they’d donned the cold weather garb, there were no such abrasions present. Inspecting the damage, they found no thinning to suggest that the soles were worn into nothing, or frayed edges to suggest that the leather was torn on some rocks while climbing—and there definitely wasn’t any remnant singing, meaning that whatever it was the magenta embers were, they hadn’t burned through the accessories conventionally. 

Oddly enough, from what they could see through the holes on either palm, the fingerless Sheikah gloves underneath bore no similar signs of what looked to be corrosion. Pulling off one of their leather, wool-lined gloves, they further examined the palm of their stealth gear, beyond curious. Had their Doublet gloves taken the brunt of the damage? Or had their stealth gear merely weathered the strain? The light certainly had to have reached them, as the remnants of whatever physical effect the stuff had on them were still palpable in their fingertips and toes, which twitched restlessly. 

Just what had that singular speck of evil feeling light done?

As Ahnu continued to stare at their gloves, they recalled what the Great Fairy Cotera had told them about apparel enhancement. How it couldn’t be done to the lot of most garb, and especially not done beyond certain degrees in others—pending on the make of it all, of course. It varied, but too much tailored magic, no matter how specialized, being imbued into an object was bound to rend it to shreds—

_ “Oh.” _ Ahnu quietly noised to themself.

_ ‘Magic.’ _ they thought. 

That’s what it was.

Magic.  _ Dark _ magic.

Raised from the surface of the world like water vapor from the dirt.

But before they could invest anymore of their mental faculties into digesting and untangling their abrupt revelations and even more latent questions, Ahnu had finally realized that the comparable fury of blizzard they were previously resigned to escaping had died down considerably, and was now—dare they say—a calm snowfall. It was through that clearing that yet again, Ahnu could _feel_ **eyes** all over them, boring into their back. 

They spun around—

And from atop the crystal spire that Ahnu stood, only moments ago ready to leap away from the mountain top—they were very swiftly, very rudely made aware of three horrific things, as the eye of the storm had evidently widened to include them—

—That they’d failed to keep track of the passing days in the month, as  **blood** scorched the deep red and bedim skies above them in brilliant, horrible arcs from a moon that was no longer as pale as their eyes—eyes that reflected pink as the snow. 

—That they were  **far** closer to the peak than they had thought. They could see the final crown of quartz that crested the grand Mt. Lanayru—

—And that there was _something_ **curled** around that crown. **Waiting**. 

And part of it—of what was an indescribably long and sinuous body—was only meters away from their head. 

* * *

**_“Go to the peak—to the Spring!”_ ** _ She had yelled at them.  _ **_“Don’t stop! Don’t run! PLEASE—“_ **

_ She was still there, above them, reaching down.  _

_ But she couldn’t reach them, and they couldn’t hear her.  _

_ Two entities on two entirely different plains.  _

_ And below, she watched them, horrified but unshed tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, as they were lowered back into the pit with that  _ **_thing._ **

* * *

_ It was there, still. Waiting for them to do something. Had it been waiting this entire time?  _

_ Longer? _

_ Longer than months? Than years? Than decades, centuries,  _ **_millennia?_ ** __

_ It was ancient, and its old, yellow, horrifically normal and gentle eyes fell on them, from so far away. It’d been watching them, for all of those three months they’d forgotten about it—brushed it aside like a baseless nightmare.  _

_ But it wasn’t a nightmare. It just wasn’t there. _

**_Not yet._ ** __

_ They knew this now—somewhat. Their dreams would always be a point of contention for them, wouldn’t they? A sad mess of concepts and memories that they had no basis to differentiate from the nonsense inherent to unconsciousness. _

_ How terrible, for this other, deeper version of them to recognize their disposition. Miserable.  _

_ What could the waking version of them recall this time? _

* * *

_ Scales of crumbling charcoal, cracking and burned by the warring, violet fire within. The same fire that danced and writhed behind the jutting and jagged crystals that leapt from the dark scales like spines—virulent and vile.  _

_ They didn’t get to see much of it. Not as much as they did the pulsing underbelly—that malicious magenta, undulating beneath the soft striations of tortured and rotting flesh. Flesh that was forced to be made tangible, and forced to make suffer and die, slowly.  _

_ They didn’t get to see much of it, before their vision went red and dark, and everything fell away beneath them. _

_ Deeper, deeper, into that darkness and the cold.  _

_ Or were they the one falling, literally? They remembered being atop a column of quartz, and then they saw that  _ **_thing—_ **

_ And now, they were looking at something else entirely.  _

_ Red. Magenta. Black. Orange. Blue.  _

_ Yellow. Yellow eyes. Soft and bright and curious.  _

_ It’s face was ugly, they could see it better, now. Looking like something old, but made young and unfinished. It didn’t feel like it was necessarily its fault—afterall, it wasn’t born yet.  _

_ He hadn’t been born in quite a long time, hadn’t he?  _

_ Good. That was a good thing, they assured themself, as they freely floated through the darkness, suspended in the center of all things _

_ They didn’t know what he was— _ **_who_ ** _ —but they could just barely understand. Barely remember. They barely knew that he  _ **_deserved_ ** _ this.  _

_ Though, admittedly, when he looked away from them, and began to crawl and drag his endless trail of viscera through the darkness, intent to get to them— _ **_to rip them apart, desperate to kill them with all the hate and desperation he could muster—_ ** _ when they heard him begin to shriek and cry again, as the very darkness he lived in began to endlessly eviscerate him— _

_ They couldn’t help but wince— _

_ They couldn’t help but wonder— _

* * *

They were only slightly aware of the fact that they didn’t know where they were. 

Their eyelids weren’t cooperating, refusing to do little more than flutter. All they could see with every little bit of light that managed to sneak into what little of their eyes they could expose, was gold. 

Soft gold that warmed their face. Slivers of gold that ticked it, and undulated like waves in a cool breeze. 

They felt something else too, as time dragged on. Sensed it. Sensed  _ them. _ Others. 

**“---- -- -- --?”**

Heard them—but couldn’t make sense of it. 

**“- ----- ---- -his morn---...”**

_ People. _

**“-- ----- -eed a doctor, they’ve b--- ---------- --- - ----- ---.”**

**“-‘-- --ver seen them before, wher- ----- ---- --ve come from?”**

**“What matters n-- -- ---- they need help.”**

**“Oh! I thin- ----‘-- -aking up! Give them some room.”**

Ahnu’s eyes shot open, and they saw the sky. The yellow light of the morning sun made them tear up, but they refused to go back into the beckoning darkness—so they continued to look up at that pale blue, through the honey colored grasses of rice crop. 

So  _ that _ was the gold they saw. 

They barely remember chasing it, as it led them out of the dark—away from the violet and magenta. But just how far had it taken them,  **that** was the question. 

“Hey there.” came a gentle voice. 

Ahnu was still too limp to flinch, and instead merely lolled their head to the side from the pool of their undone dark hair that blended into rich black soil where it rested, towards the sound. Blurry as he, and everyone else around them was, Ahnu registered that he was a Hylian. 

They squinted, and slowly, the visage of a pale man with long and tied dark brown hair that was of the same shade as his short boxed beard came into focus. He was kneeling near, but not quite over them. He wasn’t alone either—with a small child behind him and off to the side, as well as a woman with a bucket in one hand and a hoe slung over shoulder, held aloft by the other. 

All of their faces were twisted in worry. 

“Should I go get that doctor?” she asked the man.

_ ‘Kind.’ _ Ahnu thought, sitting up slowly as the man responded lowly, too quiet for them to hear past the lingering ringing in their head.  _ ‘Not a threat.’ _

Perhaps not the kind of thoughts the average person would have running through their head, all things considered, but Ahnu needed the self-affirmation—needed to overtly process it. Even so, their grip on the hilt of their Flameblade—which they quickly found laying beside them, as if it had fallen off and away from them—hardly lessened.

Slowly, the sound of the gentle, cool breeze overtook the nauseating ambience of abstract, dreadful nonsense in their head. They looked around, finding themself surrounded by tilled fields of rice and wheat on one side, and a litany of buildings on the other. 

A village. 

They managed to pick up on the end of whatever the Hylians were talking about. 

“—and get some ready, alright dear?” the man said. “I’ll meet you back home in a few.”

“Alright, love.” the woman replied, glancing over to Ahnu with a small, sympathetic smile on her face, before she turned to the little girl. “C’mon, Karin. I’m gonna need your help back home.”

“M’kay…” the child acquiesced, her eyes darting over to Ahnu briefly. She looked away quickly when they attempted to reciprocate, and ran off after her mother. 

And then, it was just Ahnu and the man. They looked up to him, confused and disoriented. His smile was tender, and it reached his soft, sand colored eyes.

“Hello, traveler.” he greeted them. “Are you feeling alright?”

Ahnu stared at him—through him—despondently for a few moments, only somewhat more aware of what was happening. Aware enough to ask a question of their own. 

“Whuh-whuooh—“ they stuttered. 

Well, almost. 

Ahnu reluctantly released their hold on their weapon, and resumed attempting to communicate with uncoordinated hands. 

‘Where?’ Ahnu signed, head and eyes darting from place to place almost frantically, refusing to settle. ‘Where am I?’

“Easy, easy.” the man attempted to soothe them, hands raised and splayed. 

He pushed himself up off of the ground slowly, offering a hand to a Ahnu. Reluctantly, with one hand traveling back to their fire enchanted sword, they took it. He helped haul them to their feet. 

“I don’t know how you ended up here,” he said, releasing their hand, “I’ve never seen you around the village, but—“

He took a step back from Ahnu, which they appreciated  _ greatly. _

“—welcome to Hateno.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha ha. Yikes. 
> 
> Fun fact, this event--and plenty others in this fic--is based off of my first experience playing the game, and traveling to Mt. Lanayru, while the general timeline of what takes place across however many months is based off of my second playthrough where I decided to take concise notes after every blood moon for no particular reason. Another fun fact is that I already planned out the actual timeline of the fic (again, roughly), and am playing along, doing everything that happens in real time to help me get fresh in the mindset. I'm about to go run around in Hateno now, so that I can write the next chapter.
> 
> Thanks for reading! see you next chapter, where Ahnu explores Hateno!
> 
> (There's some supplemental art for this chapter on my tumblr, if you're interested.)


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